AOL Broadband simply not connecting

[Lloyd45]

OK, I have a friend who is using AOL UK 512MB BB with a BT 105 Voyager modem, but apparently one day it stopped conecting to the service (at step 5 if you're familiar). Aparently that was a couple weeks ago and since, the advice AOL has given hasn't worked and she has had help from a few people including IT repair guys who seem baffled.

So, basically I went round there this afternoon to look. I tried reinstalling the entire of AOL and the modem drivers, but it still doesn't seem to work. Theres no firewall so that couldn't be the problem. I also tried adding and deleting the locations in AOL but with no luck - but when I tested the modem with a feature it has - it seemed to connect fine to some sort of tecting service called BT_test or something.

Anyone got any ideas other than a reformat?

While I was there I also checked for spyware which she seemed to have a lot of, so if anyone wants to check the HIjack this log - just ask

Thanks for any help!

[Gizmo]

I have AOL Broadband, and when we used to only have one computer, I had -exactly- the same model modem as you, a BT Voyager, which I still have, safely packed away. I remember having a couple of problems, similar to what you've described. Once, we could only connect at different times and we realised this was because of the Sygate firewall we had, so we uninstalled it. Does she have phoneline filters on every phonejack in her house? My mum once bought a Caller Display Unit and put the device attachment into one of the filters in the house which therefore resulted in no connection.

Did you delete all the spyware that you found on her computer? Your friend could try going to BT's website and downloading the latest drivers specifically for her modem and see if that solves the problem.

Hope that helps

[glc]

I do onsite AOL Broadband service here in the US - and your symptoms are related to malware. You have to get the computer cleaned up (virus and trojan scans, Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware) and then rebuild the Winsock. Do a Google search for "winsockxpfix", download it, and run it on the affected machine (note that this is not just for XP, it works on all versions of Windows). If all this still doesn't help, post a HJT log.