________________________________________________________________________________ /* http://windowsmagazine.com/columns/explorer/2000/02.htm */ EXPLORER Fred Langa January 18, 2000 AOL 5.0: The Upgrade of Death? My first experience with AOL 5.0 was in early winter when I tried to upgrade from AOL 4.0 to AOL 5.0. I'll spare you the details, but after trying every trick I knew to get the system working properly after the upgrade, the punchline was "Format C:\". I wrote about my unhappy experiences in my newsletter (see http://www.langa.com/newsletters/1999/nov-1-99.htm#aol) and was amazed at the flood of mail I got in reply. Here's a small sample: Thank heavens someone is warning people about AOL 5.0. I've spent the last week trying to reconstruct my hard drive after trying to install AOL's "update." Their tech support people were extremely courteous but also totally useless. They don't seem to possess the most basic troubleshooting skills. My system ran fine for months under AOL 4.0, but immediately after installing AOL 5.0 the system would no longer connect to AOL through my ISP. Tech support's conclusion? It's the ISP's fault! Anyway, in an Internet full of people getting their 15 minutes of fame, your newsletter really stands out in its usefulness. Thanks. -- Paul. As a systems coordinator I have been aware of problems caused by my users installing AOL on their computers at work. I must have sent out half a dozen memos begging them not to download it, or Instant Messenger or even Winamp -- which contains Instant Messenger, but as with any forbidden fruit, it is irresistible to them...and as you can attest, it tends to knock them AND their Outlook e-mail right off the network. I spend hours every month uninstalling AOL, restoring network connectivity, and getting Outlook to resume delivery. I sent a copy of your newsletter to all my users. Maybe they'll believe you! -- L. Richart Your comments reflect my feelings almost EXACTLY! ... I provide support for an application that uses VBScript, and AOL overwrites the VBSCRIPT.DLL file without asking or checking. Since it ALWAYS puts an old version there in place of the existing one, my apps STOP WORKING! We have advised all our users NOT to install AOL under ANY CONDITIONS. I HATE IT. -- Mike Gauthier Amen, amen, amen! It's about time somebody pointed out how ~bad~ AOL is. It's gotten to the point that when I get a phone call from a customer who can no longer connect to their local network, the first question I have is, "Did you install AOL?" Their installation steps on any network settings and creates a huge mess. After I straighten out the TCP/IP settings, I also have to make sure that AOL hasn't bound File and Printer Sharing to the AOL Adapter, and the new AOL Dialup Adapter (nothing redundant there, eh?), to prevent access to local disk shares while on the Internet. -- Paul J McMahon Jr. (Want to see more letters? Click to http://www.langa.com/newsletters/1999/nov-4-99.htm#aol1) With all that, I decided simply to try avoiding AOL, but it’s a marketing behemoth that just won’t quit. Day after day, readers would write to me or to the Winmag.com staff complaining about AOL5.0. Then, last week, with the announcement of AOL taking over Time Warner and becoming the largest online/content source on the planet, it became clear we needed a closer look: The Tests Because I knew from reader mail and from painful personal experience that upgrading from 4.0 to 5.0 often brought major trouble, I decided to try a clean install of AOL 5.0. I started with a new Windows installation on a test machine -- a PII/400 with 128MB of RAM. The basic setup I used is one I’ve perfected over time; it’s a simplified, known-good software foundation that I developed for all manner of hardware and software tests. That known-good foundation is built on Windows 98se and includes all to-date patches and updates, plus the latest versions of Internet Explorer (5.01) and Communicator (4.7) which connect to the Internet via a speedy LAN connection. The setup has a minimal complement of additional software installed; it’s a lean, very clean install with extremely few external variables in the mix. I keep a full “disk image” of that known-good setup so I can repeatedly start from the exact same, known-good conditions when I’m running tests. With this setup, and using IE, I surfed to the AOL.Com Web site and clicked on the button for “ALL NEW AOL 5.0! Click HERE For 250 Hours FREE!” That started a remote install process by which AOL first sniffed my system to see if I had a previous version already installed. (I did not.) Then, the AOL site offered me several ways to get a copy of its 5.0 software; I choose to download the 12.6MB setup file. When it was finished downloading, I clicked on it and started the setup. Throughout the setup, I accepted the defaults -- I didn’t alter or force-fit the AOL software in any way. But when the setup was done and the AOL software first tried to run, it crashed. I got the message that WAOL (the guts of the AOL software) had caused a fault in Kernel32.dll -- a core part of Windows. Rather than proceed with a mangled copy of AOL, I reformatted and restored the known-good disk image, and repeated the same steps (including the initial download) from scratch. This time -- I have no clue why, because everything was identical -- I didn’t get the WAOL fault and was able to get online to the AOL service. Because I was trying to find out what AOL was changing on my machine, I did nothing online -- I didn’t access any part of the AOL service beyond the opening screen, and did nothing that would change the initial setup in any way. In fact, as soon as I’d successfully connected to AOL, I immediately logged off. AOL then determined that I needed updates to my brand-new setup. It automatically downloaded the updates, and restarted the AOL software. I then shut down AOL, rebooted, and used several software tools to see what had been done to my system. (If you’ve installed AOL on your system, you can check C:\America Online 5.0\Install.Log to see the bulk of what was done to your system. I used that Log file, plus several other tools.) The Results In all, I found AOL had added or altered 229 files on my system, including more than 4.5MB of Windows system files! Most of these system files were placed in a directory called C:\America Online 5.0\net\win98se\, and if you’re somewhat familiar with Windows, you’ll recognize many of these files as essential components of Windows networking -- they’re emphatically not files you want to be fooling around with: A partial list includes ftp.exe, mapi32.dll, msnet32.dll, mswsock.dll, ndis.vxd, net.exe, nwlink.vxd, protman.dos and protman.exe, secur32.dll, svrapi.dll, vdhcp.386, vnetbios.vxd, vnetsup.vxd, vredir.vxd, winipcfg.exe, winpopup.exe, ws2thk.dll, wshtcp.vxd, wsipx.vxd, wsock.vxd, wsock2.vxd and many, many more. In some cases, the files appear to be duplicates of those already installed and working fine on my test system. For example, the AOL installed “wsock.vxd” is exactly the same size and carries exactly the same date stamp as the version originally on my system, except that the original Windows version is called “Wsock.vxd” and resides in the windows\system directory. In my opinion, this kind of installation is incredibly sloppy: If the file is exactly the same as one already on the system, why install a second copy? Or, if it’s not actually the same file, why give it a name, size, and date stamp that so closely mimics Windows’ own, differing only in initial capitalization? A setup like this seems to be practically begging for file-confusion trouble. In other cases, the system files were dramatically different. For example, take Mapi32.dll -- the Microsoft Messaging Application Programming Interface, a standard set of functions that mail-enabled and mail-aware applications use to create, manipulate, transfer, file and store mail messages. The original (and perfectly-good) “Mapi32.dll” in my Windows\system directory is 128KB in size and is dated and dated 4/23/99. The “mapi32.dll” that AOL installed is 596KB in size and dated 5/10/99. Can you say “version skew?” This kind of thing -- having multiple versions of the same essential system files -- is one of the major reasons why systems become unstable: For whatever reason, if an application ends up using the wrong version of an essential system file -- kablooey, you’re toast, and you’re often left scratching your head wondering what went wrong. Besides adding software, the AOL setup also altered my system settings. For example, although the test system was already connected to the Internet via a LAN with a perfectly good, fully functional TCP/IP networking setup, the AOL setup software went ahead and installed a superfluous “AOL Dial Up Adapter” and an “AOL Adapter.” Neither of these items was necessary, as the system already had a perfectly good Internet connection. (In fact, the AOL setup even correctly identified and used the original setup -- but then installed its own stuff anyway!) All this merely adds unnecessary complexity to my networking setup; not a recipe for stability. I also was astonished to see lines in the AOL install log where AOL writes “EnablePowerManagement” keys into the registry, changing the way communications events interact with a system’s power management settings. Perhaps this is one reason why many, many users have reported trouble getting AOL 5 to work right on laptops, where Power Management is used far more often and more aggressively than on desktop systems. In any case, why on earth would an online service need to change your system’s power management registry information without informing you, or offering you any choices? But Wait -- There’s Less! All the above would be bad enough, but AOL also wants to make you use a customized version of Internet Explorer; that modified version of IE is notoriously troublesome: IE itself is fine, but once AOL is done diddling with it and placing it atop its own special networking plumbing, it can become an unstable mess. The AOL-modified versions of IE fail BrowserTune’s Level Two tests more often than any other browser, for example. (Normal, unmodified copies of IE sail through those tests without a glitch.) We’re getting into subjective opinion now, but I have to say that, software aside, even just as an online service AOL is pretty bad. If the force-fed ads don't get you (two or three before you even get off the opening screen), the endless spam will. If the spam doesn't get you, then you'll get tripped up by AOL's proprietary and very nonstandard e-mail system, which works best only when talking to other AOL people. Talk about a captive audience. All these problems aren’t because AOL is trying to do something cutting edge and wonderful: There’s nothing on AOL that couldn’t be done in a more standardized and less hyper-aggressive and proprietary way. But because of the way it’s designed, by needlessly changing things it has no business changing and adding stuff it doesn’t need to, AOL can reduce a perfectly good computer system to a paperweight. Sheesh. This isn’t new behavior: For as long as I can remember, AOL has always aggressively altered the networking settings on machines it's installed on; stuffed duplicate files on your system, and otherwise misbehaved. AOL's own tech support admits that -- oops! -- installing AOL may make your system unable to connect to other ISPs, and that -- oops! -- your Internet-sharing software (such as Win98's ICS) may no longer work. But these aren't bugs. It's the software installing itself in exactly the way AOL intends. You simply have to do things the AOL way, period. The Upshot If you're a novice with a standalone system that has no Internet software installed, isn't on a network, and will never share a connection, AOL can be a great way to get your feet wet in the online world: AOL’s all-in-one approach can be useful to people confused or frightened by choices. Almost everyone else will have better service, more control, and just plain better results with a real ISP, a real e-mail client, and a real (unmodified) browser. And the more network-dependent your PC is, the more religiously you should avoid AOL -- the deep diddling AOL does to a system’s networking software is neither benign nor smart. Likewise, the more e-mail-dependent you are, the more you should avoid AOL: AOL’s proprietary formatting and attachment-handling are notoriously incompatible with standard Internet e-mail: Only short, simple plain-text messages reliably get into or out of AOL’s “do it our way” e-mail system. AOL and laptops may be an especially poor mix, at least according to reader e-mails: As mentioned, many, many users have trouble getting AOL 5.0 to work right on laptops. I suspect part of the reason is that laptops are typically very network and e-mail-dependent; and part of the reason may be the power management diddling that AOL does. But if you must use AOL for some reason, either now or in the future as AOL exerts its influence as the 800-pound gorilla of the media world, your best bet may be never to upgrade-in-place an existing AOL installation. Instead, write down all your passwords and other settings, save any downloaded files in a non-AOL directory on your system, and then uninstall AOL completely from your system before putting any new version on. (Note that uninstalling/reinstalling won’t affect your password, your account settings, or anything else that’s stored on AOL’s own computers; your reinstall will pick up those settings exactly as you left them.) Even with this, you run the risk of file confusion and version skew, but at least a clean install minimizes the mess: Although I had a paltry 50 percent success rate with a clean AOL install, I had a flat zero percent success rate with an in-place upgrade. What’s Your Take? I had hoped that AOL might eventually migrate away from its proprietary formats and software, but because those factors give AOL a captive audience, I doubt it’ll happen anytime soon: AOL needs captive eyeballs to see its ads and eat its spam. My guess is that, for as long as possible, they’ll try to keep their users living in the newly-enlarged (via Time Warner) but still closed and proprietary universe that is AOL. Is your AOL experience different from mine? Have you found ways around the upgrade hassles? What do you think the future will hold as AOL emerges as the biggest media company on the planet? Join in the discussion! /* more: http://www.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/21/1652224 */ ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 2000 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org