Number 204 - May 2000

AOL5 Deletes Network Settings
John L. Kauer, Saginaw Valley Computer Association, March 2000 Blue Chip News
This has started to affect EDS because some of our users insist on having AOL Instant Messenger to monitor their home mail at work. Our developers need it to test applications too and are really getting screwed up.     Don't look now but America On Line (AOL) 5 may have just deleted your network settings. BugNet has confirmed a bug within America Online's newest Internet client that selectively eviscerates Windows 98 networking protocols.     Here's The Scenario: To save users from reconfiguring their Windows 98 network settings, AOL 5 installs its own adapter and TCP/IP protocol stack during the installation process. A nice thought but therein lies the problem. AOL also seeks out network adapters (modem or network card) that link to more than one instance of the same protocol. It then silently and unceremoniously removes all but one of those protocols.     This is a particularly nasty circumstance for users who must maintain two network connections. Network administrator Robert Everland III, for instance, uses one IP stack to connect directly with his local ISP through the company firewall. He then uses a second IP stack to connect with his office network, which sits behind the firewall.     "AOL 5 put in its dial-up and network adapter for me," explained Everland, "but when I rebooted, it wouldn't let me into the network. The one protocol it left behind would let me get on the Internet, but I could no longer access my LAN."	Testing conducted at KeyLabs confirms this aberrant behavior. On a machine running a network adapter bound to two TCP/IP protocols, AOL 5 efficiently removed the second stack after rebooting. Even if we added three or more protocols to one adapter, AOL 5 still proceeded to remove all but one.     America Online is aware of the problem, although the company has not yet provided a direct solution or workaround. "We're aware that a small percentage of AOL members who have downloaded [AOL] 5 are experiencing difficulties connecting for one reason or another," stated David Seldin, spokesman for AOL. "We're working to gain a better understanding of why that's occurring, and our member services team is working with users to address their problems."     Worse still, AOL 5 users cannot simply reinstall a protocol stack once it has been deleted.     "When we reinstalled the deleted protocols, AOL politely asked us to reboot our machine in order to reach the Internet," said Glines. "When our computer came back up, we found that our newly installed protocols had been, once again, removed."     Until America Online finds an answer, AOL enthusiasts will have to live with inability to play well with others. To run more than one instance of a protocol at a time, the only solution for now is to uninstall AOL 5 and drop back to a previous version.
Number 204 - May 2000