Joan, I've tried everything you did and my problem will not disappear. It has been happening for nearly a week. Jon

Sharon- I had EXACTLY the same problem Jon did yesterday...and nothing made the "Spam Folder (3)" go away--you could log off AOL and back on, reboot, whatever, and the spam folder would be empty after you dumped any spam that was in there -- but the (3) would reappear within a few seconds even when the folder was empty. In this situation it was definitely a glitch on AOL's end most of the day yesterday. It isn't recurring today thankfully. Joan In a message dated 12/15/2009 1:47:46 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, DULCICH6@aol.com writes: Jon, When this happens, try clicking on the Search Mail tab. Then wait until its done searching. Nothing will appear in the search result area, but for some reason this works about 99% of the time to retrieve "lost" email. Sharon

Jon, When this happens, try clicking on the Search Mail tab. Then wait until its done searching. Nothing will appear in the search result area, but for some reason this works about 99% of the time to retrieve "lost" email. Sharon ---------------------------------- In a message dated 12/15/2009 6:17:19 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, jraymond651@aol.com writes: When I open my mail, it indicates I have 3 messages in the spam box. But when I open the spam box, there are no messages. Rebooting the computer doesn't solve the problem. Ideas? Jon

It was an AOL glitch -- seems to be fixed now on mine. I assume yours will be straightened out soon too...it's temporary. Joan In a message dated 12/15/2009 9:17:01 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, jraymond651@aol.com writes: When I open my mail, it indicates I have 3 messages in the spam box. But when I open the spam box, there are no messages. Rebooting the computer doesn't solve the problem. Ideas? Jon

When I open my mail, it indicates I have 3 messages in the spam box. But when I open the spam box, there are no messages. Rebooting the computer doesn't solve the problem. Ideas? Jon

Both AOL 9.0 and 9.1 are on my computer, the only desktop icon is 9.1. How can I add a 9.0 icon to the desktop so I can sign on with it? When I tried the icon has '9.0 Short Cut' which does not offer a sign in opportunity. Thanks, Dave (fla)

In a message dated 12/11/2009 12:01:05 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, BogusWoody@aol.com writes: That's a lot of cookies, and it appears your computer was infected with the WIN 32Adware.BHO and WIN.Trojan.Ransom virii/trojan families. That could possibly explain the ghost in your computer, but I don't know how it would boot the computer from "off" on its own. Woody, McAfee automatically runs a full scan about every other day, and of course while it is scanning, forget doing anything else. It takes possibly close to an hour, I have never timed it but it's a long time which leaves me to believe that it is a full scan. We also get updates every day and sometimes more than one in a day. Thanks for the new advice I will run the ad-aware again to see what comes up if anything. Nancy

Nancy, That's a lot of cookies, and it appears your computer was infected with the WIN 32Adware.BHO and WIN.Trojan.Ransom virii/trojan families. That could possibly explain the ghost in your computer, but I don't know how it would boot the computer from "off" on its own. You might run Ad-Aware again later and see if it rid your computer of the win32.adware.bho bug. Some say Ad-Aware puts the bug in quarantine, but next time the computer is rebooted, it's there again. If the bug shows up again, try a full scan with your McAfee and then another with Ad-Aware. Then if that doesn't work, try the specialized, very effective Malwarebytes at http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html Be cautious, as on that page there are many places to download the wrong programs. The right program is in green, says "Download Now" and is 4.62MB. In conclusion, it looks like Ad-Adware just removed one heckava bunch of cookies that was slowing you down, and removed or quarantined two virii/trojans -- but perhaps just temporarily. More scans will tell. Woody ================================= In msg 12/10/2009 8:36 PM CDT, Nlpakkala@aol.com writes: Woody, Here are the results of my Ad Aware scan- total of 397 objects. 395 cookies, WIN 32Adware.BHO adware-1, and WIN 32.Trojan.Ransom-1 It took about two hours and somewhere near 200,000 files. I checked to see how much space and I have 65.4GB free out of 88.7GB so I should have plenty of room to leave the Ad-aware program installed. I'm sure you are right about needing more RAM which we will do before long. Maybe that is why it takes sooooo long for AOL to load. It goes thru the first two steps quickly but getting thru the third step takes quite a few minutes. When my computer re-started all by itself I hadn't installed the Ad-aware program yet so there must be a ghost here somewhere. Thank you for all your good advice, I really appreciate it. Nancy

Woody, Forgot to mention that the computer does seem to be a little bit faster although it still takes forever for AOL to load completely. Nancy

In a message dated 12/10/2009 6:12:17 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, BogusWoody@aol.com writes: If your hard drive is crowded, I think you'd be OK uninstalling Ad-Aware, as your other security seems to be adequate. Woody, Here are the results of my Ad Aware scan- total of 397 objects. 395 cookies, WIN 32Adware.BHO adware-1, and WIN 32.Trojan.Ransom-1 It took about two hours and somewhere near 200,000 files. I checked to see how much space and I have 65.4GB free out of 88.7GB so I should have plenty of room to leave the Ad-aware program installed. I'm sure you are right about needing more RAM which we will do before long. Maybe that is why it takes sooooo long for AOL to load. It goes thru the first two steps quickly but getting thru the third step takes quite a few minutes. When my computer re-started all by itself I hadn't installed the Ad-aware program yet so there must be a ghost here somewhere. Thank you for all your good advice, I really appreciate it. Nancy

Nancy, Ad-Aware finally finished its scan after six hours or so, finding and removing 55 "bad objects" out of 440,000. Looking at the log, they were just the normal junk cookies that AOL and other web sites hang on your computer. And the Pro version of Ad-Aware is probably free for a while and then they require that it be paid for. So I'd stick with the free version. If your hard drive is crowded, I think you'd be OK uninstalling Ad-Aware, as your other security seems to be adequate. Woody ============================= Bogus Woody writes: Nancy, Although I have Norton Internet Security, I installed Ad-Aware to see how it behaved and if it could find anything Norton didn't. So far Ad-Aware has been scanning 4.6 hours and scanned 340,000 "objects" and found 0 (bad) objects on my C drive. It is now scanning my D drive, so I have approx another 4 hours of scanning to go. What that says is that the long scanning time on your computer was normal. Also, when you saw your computer boot up on its own, it had probably reached the end of its installation of Ad-Aware and restarted on its own as required. Mine also rebooted on its own after installation. With all of the security that you exercise on your computer, it looks like the slowness culprit is the 512 megs of memory. With that, any scanning or searching going on in the background is going to make your computer appear to have frozen. When the background activity, the computer should speed up again to normal. Another 512 megs of memory would make a big improvement. If Ad-Aware doesn't find any bad "objects", or maybe one or two mild ones such as cookies that your other security didn't find, I'd uninstall Ad-Aware. But it was worth having Ad-Aware check out how effective your other security is. Woody ================== In msg 12/10/2009 6:50AM CST, Nlpakkala@aol.com writes: Woody, I did empty the recycle bin and I do often go thru and eliminate the cookies. I used the link you gave me and downloaded the free version of their adware program. At the moment I am performing a scan with it (I'm using my husband's laptop to write this). It took 15 minutes this morning after turning it on before I could use it. It also mentioned the free Pro version, is that better? Does it scan automatically in the background or do I have to perform a scan manually? Their may be some other issues too as before I downloaded the program I think the computer was having a "heart attack", it just froze up and even the alt.control delete didn't work. Eventually the task manager box did come up but not willingly and it kept blinking. We eventually pulled the plug and restarted it after a few minutes. Earlier in the afternoon when no one was using the computer but I happened to be walking by the computer room, I noticed that it was restarting all by itself. I don't think that has ever happened before. I'm not expecting you to be able to answer all these problems for me but thought I would mention them anyway. The scan has been in progress now for 14 minutes and hasn't found any problems yet. Oh yes, the AOL spyware box came up this morning and said it was scanning and no items found. It doesn't do that every day though. Nancy ======================== In msg 12/10/2009 2:01AM EST, BogusWoody@aol.com writes: You really ought to dump your recycle bin, esp if you have over 200megs or so in it. And cookies -- it wouldn't hurt to go into that and delete cookies that don't look like they're affiliated with web sites you frequent. Woody

Nancy, Although I have Norton Internet Security, I installed Ad-Aware to see how it behaved and if it could find anything Norton didn't. So far Ad-Aware has been scanning 4.6 hours and scanned 340,000 "objects" and found 0 (bad) objects on my C drive. It is now scanning my D drive, so I have approx another 4 hours of scanning to go. What that says is that the long scanning time on your computer was normal. Also, when you saw your computer boot up on its own, it had probably reached the end of its installation of Ad-Aware and restarted on its own as required. Mine also rebooted on its own after installation. With all of the security that you exercise on your computer, it looks like the slowness culprit is the 512 megs of memory. With that, any scanning or searching going on in the background is going to make your computer appear to have frozen. When the background activity, the computer should speed up again to normal. Another 512 megs of memory would make a big improvement. If Ad-Aware doesn't find any bad "objects", or maybe one or two mild ones such as cookies that your other security didn't find, I'd uninstall Ad-Aware. But it was worth having Ad-Aware check out how effective your other security is. Woody ================== In msg 12/10/2009 6:50AM CST, Nlpakkala@aol.com writes: Woody, I did empty the recycle bin and I do often go thru and eliminate the cookies. I used the link you gave me and downloaded the free version of their adware program. At the moment I am performing a scan with it (I'm using my husband's laptop to write this). It took 15 minutes this morning after turning it on before I could use it. It also mentioned the free Pro version, is that better? Does it scan automatically in the background or do I have to perform a scan manually? Their may be some other issues too as before I downloaded the program I think the computer was having a "heart attack", it just froze up and even the alt.control delete didn't work. Eventually the task manager box did come up but not willingly and it kept blinking. We eventually pulled the plug and restarted it after a few minutes. Earlier in the afternoon when no one was using the computer but I happened to be walking by the computer room, I noticed that it was restarting all by itself. I don't think that has ever happened before. I'm not expecting you to be able to answer all these problems for me but thought I would mention them anyway. The scan has been in progress now for 14 minutes and hasn't found any problems yet. Oh yes, the AOL spyware box came up this morning and said it was scanning and no items found. It doesn't do that every day though. Nancy ======================== In msg 12/10/2009 2:01AM EST, BogusWoody@aol.com writes: You really ought to dump your recycle bin, esp if you have over 200megs or so in it. And cookies -- it wouldn't hurt to go into that and delete cookies that don't look like they're affiliated with web sites you frequent. Woody

In a message dated 12/10/2009 2:01:32 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, BogusWoody@aol.com writes: You really ought to dump your recycle bin, esp if you have over 200megs or so in it. And cookies -- it wouldn't hurt to go into that and delete cookies that don't look like they're affiliated with web sites you frequent. Woody, I did empty the recycle bin and I do often go thru and eliminate the cookies. I used the link you gave me and downloaded the free version of their adware program. At the moment I am performing a scan with it (I'm using my husband's laptop to write this). It took 15 minutes this morning after turning it on before I could use it. It also mentioned the free Pro version, is that better? Does it scan automatically in the background or do I have to perform a scan manually? Their may be some other issues too as before I downloaded the program I think the computer was having a "heart attack", it just froze up and even the alt.control delete didn't work. Eventually the task manager box did come up but not willingly and it kept blinking. We eventually pulled the plug and restarted it after a few minutes. Earlier in the afternoon when no one was using the computer but I happened to be walking by the computer room, I noticed that it was restarting all by itself. I don't think that has ever happened before. I'm not expecting you to be able to answer all these problems for me but thought I would mention them anyway. The scan has been in progress now for 14 minutes and hasn't found any problems yet. Oh yes, the AOL spyware box came up this morning and said it was scanning and no items found. It doesn't do that every day though. Nancy

Nancy, You ask if more pics would slow things down? In general, the more stuff on your hard drive, including pictures, the more it slows down. I've never been sure about spyware protection by AOL. This AoL page seems to claim that it does: _http://help.channels.aol.com/kjump.adp?articleId=220119_ (http://help.channels.aol.com/kjump.adp?articleId=220119) But you can still run AdAware from Lavasoft (beware imitators that are not of Lavasoft) and see if it catches malware that AoL doesn't pick up. You really ought to dump your recycle bin, esp if you have over 200megs or so in it. And cookies -- it wouldn't hurt to go into that and delete cookies that don't look like they're affiliated with web sites you frequent. Woody ============= Nlpakkala@aol.com writes: Thanks Woody, I was thinking that AOL had an adware program built in but I will check that out and if not will check the lavasoft site. I've been meaning to dump the recycle bin but every time I look at it I wonder "should that have really been deleted" and I planned to check those out but time gets away from me and I still haven't done it. I should probably just dump it and don't look back! By the way, would having lots of pictures in folders affect anything? When I'm off line things are not so slow. Nancy

In a message dated 12/9/2009 1:34:15 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, BogusWoody@aol.com writes: AdAware and the machine ran fast again, and the owners thought I was a true computer whiz. See http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php Thanks Woody, I was thinking that AOL had an adware program built in but I will check that out and if not will check the lavasoft site. I've been meaning to dump the recycle bin but every time I look at it I wonder "should that have really been deleted" and I planned to check those out but time gets away from me and I still haven't done it. I should probably just dump it and don't look back! By the way, would having lots of pictures in folders affect anything? When I'm off line things are not so slow. Nancy

Nancy, I don't know the answer. However, you should run Disk Cleanup regularly to dump your recycle bin and temporary files. Could be that having only 512mb memory plus many mb in your recycle bin has something to do with the error. WinXP would run slowly with only 512mb memory. Also, you need to run AdAware from Lavasoft to get rid of spyware and junk cookies. I've seen computers so clogged with spyware they would take twenty minutes to get to the regular screen on bootup, and five minutes to respond to an entry. The spyware was "phoning home" like crazy. I ran AdAware and the machine ran fast again, and the owners thought I was a true computer whiz. See http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php Woody ============= Nlpakkala@aol.com writes: Hi, This morning when I first started the computer the following message was on the screen: Run time error Program:C:\Progra~1Purene~1Portma~1\PortAOL.exe This looks like an AOL problem or Port Magic, how do I fix this? This is the first time for this message but I have had other run time error messages but they are not frequent. I have Windows XP with AOL 9.0SE running on an E machine with a 100G hard drive and 512 memory. The computer is running very slow. I was going to do a defrag but it said I didn't need to. Also ran Registry Patrol and I have the AOL McAfee security suite and have dumped temporary files etc. I do have a very large recycle bin, could this affect anything? Nancy

Hi, This morning when I first started the computer the following message was on the screen: Run time error Program:C:\Progra~1Purene~1Portma~1\PortAOL.exe This looks like an AOL problem or Port Magic, how do I fix this? This is the first time for this message but I have had other run time error messages but they are not frequent. I have Windows XP with AOL 9.0SE running on an E machine with a 100G hard drive and 512 memory. The computer is running very slow. I was going to do a defrag but it said I didn't need to. Also ran Registry Patrol and I have the AOL McAfee security suite and have dumped temporary files etc. I do have a very large recycle bin, could this affect anything? Nancy

No--no one sees the addresses in the parentheses...the only person who would know they had received a BCC is each single person who gets their copy. Joan In a message dated 12/4/2009 11:31:52 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, Sugarfoot1@aol.com writes: I'm using 9.0SE and the Bcc button is at the bottom, inside the address book. it puts each individual email address in its own parentheses. wouldn't putting numerous email addresses inside one set of parentheses let them see who else is also getting the email? julee

I'm using 9.0SE and the Bcc button is at the bottom, inside the address book. it puts each individual email address in its own parentheses. wouldn't putting numerous email addresses inside one set of parentheses let them see who else is also getting the email? julee Message: 3 Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 09:05:41 EST From: JYoung6180@aol.com Subject: Re: [AOL-RW] Bcc...How? Where? To: aolers-rootsweb@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <c54.5f0414af.38491fb5@aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" You can send bccs by enclosing the addresses (in the Copy to box) in parentheses. For example: Copy To: (joe@aol.com, john@isp.net, susie@myisp.com)

re: where did the AOL white pages go. I have 9.0 Security Edition & the white pages are under Community in the tool bar. But it doesn't do any good, because it loads so slowly that I give up waiting. Bev Carlson of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, United States of America "Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so love the people who treat you right, FORGET about the ones who don't. And believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it." auth. unk.