At the Sign On screen, click Setup.

Click the Misc tab and uncheck 'Start AIM when Windows Starts' and click OK.

 If you are already signed on, click the 'AOL Instant Messenger' box in the

lower left of the Buddy List window,

 then click Options | Edit Preferences and 

click the Misc tab and uncheck 'Start AIM when Windows Starts' and click OK.

Remove AIM from Personal Bookmark folder. 

Delete "launch.aim" from every user profile.
With Communicator closed:
In "...Communicator\Program\", delete the \aim\ folder and the 
subfolder \aim\sounds\ and all contents. 

Run Regedit: 

WARNING: Backup the Registry BEFORE Editing!!

Edit | Find -- type in "AIM" (no quotes). Remove all references.
Edit | Find -- type in "AOL" (no quotes). Remove all references.
 **SEE WARNING BELOW**

Exit Regedit

Exit Windows


Restart your computer. 

On Win16,  AIM files are listed under PROGRAM. 
  There is a SOUNDS sub, however.

This page is maintained by Frank Tabor, Jay Garcia and Kevin Hecht

and

This material is being made available to you subject to some Legal Stuff

Thanks, on all counts.

But this is INSANITY. I ask again, HOW DARE those mangy buzzards insert advertising that I cannot get rid of, not in a web page to view, but WHEN I RUN A PROGRAM? And make me run regedit to get rid of it? And they accuse Microsoft of bad practices? Another group to add to the list of people I would like to find and beat senseless. Except that it is pretty clear someone got there first, so that being senseless they did this. Bah.

 

From: Walter W. Giesbrecht [walterg@yorku.ca]

Sent: Sunday, July 05, 1998 8:23 PM

To: Jerry Pournelle

Subject: Re: How Do I Remove The AOL Instant Messenger

I note that the message I sent you re: the above has shown up on your website, but the URL where I got the information didn’t make it. In the interests of proper attribution (and possibly intellectual property rights), would it be too much to ask to insert the following above the text of the message:

***

The following information comes from the Netscape Unofficial FAQ,

to be found at http://www.jazzland.net/jgarcia/ufaq/default.htm

 

***

I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was smart enough to think this all up on my own :), ‘cause I’m not. Being a librarian means that I don’t actually have to know anything except where to find the information I need. Makes life simpler in some respects.

Given what you’re going through with HTML, you’re probably best off hand-coding everything. I use FP and a few other tools for some fancy stuff, but my editor of choice is HTML Writer, which is nothing more that Notepad with a few bells and whistles.

Take care.

--

 

Walter W. Giesbrecht walterg@yorku.ca

 

Data Librarian (416)736-2100 ext. 77551

York University Libraries 113 SSB

I am absolutely certiain there are lines and things in there that will make this harder to format and I am not going to do anything with them, This page and this subject are now officially accursed.

As to hand coding I am damned it I will do that. I am a writer who does some programming for fun. There is not fun at all in this, and I see no way to MAKE it fun. I would rather write. It hardly matters. WHATEVER I do, a dozen people will have a browser that can't see it. They will write me an irate letter accusing me of fraud. I wonder why ANYONE puts up with this?

Yes, I get a hundred good letters for each of those. Too many good ones to read for that matter. But if I ignore one of those, I will get another, more shrill, with copies to half my friends. As a magazine journalist I was insulated from this stuff by the people in Peterborough to some extent, and for some reason people didn't feel as free to accuse me of personal malice because they have a browser than can't read my text. And Jon Udell who is a blooking genius maintained the BYTE web site.

 

Excuse my depression. I'm sure things will be amusing in the morning.

For tonight, enough.  Say hello to York Minster for me. Lovely church. Chapter House was interesting too.

 

From: Allan Vysma [vysma@gte.net]

Sent: Friday, July 03, 1998 7:29 PM

To: jerryp@earthlink.net

Subject: AIM Removal

 

There is an easy way to disable the AOHell Instant Messenger. Just launch the program, click on setup, select the Misc tab and uncheck the "Start AIM when Windows starts" box. Done. This will spare you from the pop up register screen among other things.....

To remove all traces of this program(at least having to see it on the toolbar), do the following:

In Netscape, click on bookmarks, select edit. In the bookmark editor, select Instant Message, right click, select delete, and you will never have to see your little yellow nemesis again.......

Take Care,

Allan Vysma

Which still leaves the wretched thing taking up disk space, and available to sneak in and get me, and reactivate, which I understand it can do. Again, bah.

 

From: Len Cleary [lcleary@hal-pc.org]

Sent: Friday, July 03, 1998 5:09 PM

To: jerryp@jerrypournelle.com

Subject: Getting rid of AIM

 

Jerry,

Just read your comments about getting rid of AOL’s Internet Messenger. Our system guy just cleared it from my machine by starting regedit and searching on AOL, deleting all related keys. Seems to have worked. Might be complicated is you have regular AOL installed, but that wasn’t a problem for me.

Cheers,

Len Cleary

 

PS Sorry about the BYTE fiasco. Have read your column for years. Don’t always agree, but enjoy your ideas.

I can't imagine anyone always agreeing with me. What a dull world. I expect regedit is the right ticket, but one does it with a tiny bit of trepidation, especially to my wife's machine. And it still leaves the monster in there somewhere.

 

From: Keith Irwin [kirwin@iglobal.net]

Sent: Sunday, July 05, 1998 7:08 PM

To: Jerry Pournelle

Subject: Outlook Mail File

 

No doubt this is the 1000^th message.....

Try c:\windows\application data\microsoft\outlook

This is where Outlook keeps all of its files, including archives, rules, etc.

Use find files to search for "*.pst" so see what’s around.

Also, right click on the top level file in the folder list and choose properties. The name and location of the file is there. You can compact the file from here, to (under advanced) but this works only if you’ve deleted things from "deleted items."

About inserting a lot of names at once into a Group: I don’t know either!

My attempts to find our resulted in what follows, which you needn’t read, as it doesn’t answer your question:

The structure of outlook.pst is binary, and there’s no way to output Outlook mail in a standard UNIX text format. I have no idea why. Dragging a selection of mail from outlook to a folder creates files, but they’re OLE’d back to Outlook itself. If you notepad those files, they’ve got garbage at the top, and maybe some text if the message had a reply in it. Odd.

You can "export" (on the file menu) to a tabbed or comma delimited file,

which first names all the fields, then names all the data. You can do this

for a whole folder. When you click on the file name, Excel brings up the

header data in a table

You can "export" a folder to an excel file, go into excel, highlight and copy the column of "from" addresses, then open a message, and paste the list into the "to" field, and that’ll get your mail out, but it doesn’t do what you ask, which is to create a grouped contact list.

 

THANKS.

In INT it is a .pst file but it is in WINNT40 for some reason.

I am now thoroughly discouraged. I have to scroll to read this on my 21" monitor. I do not know why. I will try one more experiment at pasting mail somewhere. but this is INSANE. I hate it. I can't make a mail list, Ican'tmaintain this site using some decent editor with a decent spelling checker, everything has to be done by hand. If I have to backspace it takes an eternity and when I do I overshoot and I have to wait to see the results. This is less than no fun.

Thanks for the information. Microsoft strikes again. I'll try EUDORA. It HAS to be better than Microsoft Outlook. And it's the monk's cell for me. I have not been this discouraged since CP/M days. WHY is the border so far to the right? WHY CANNOT I MAKE THIS STUPID THING CONFORM?

And suddenly it fixes itself. I do not to this moment really know why.

So it was finally figured out.  Or at least fixed itself. At least in the Front Page editor.

 

 

Enough for the afternoon.