laptop and AOL problem

Ok I help someone here can help. I bought my niece a new laptop for graduation and she called me today to tell me she is having trouble. When she is connected to AOL she says she gets disconnected after about 10 minutes. She has windows XP installed. Anyone have any advice onwhat I should look at besides making sure she has the call waiting cancelled when she calls AOL? I am flyinf there TUES, so I will probbaly tackle this on Wed. Thanks,


Randy

you could also download one of those programs to keep from getting kicked off aol which basically just pings aol every minute or so to keep aol from kicking you off.


if she keeps getting kicked off after shes been idle for 10 minutes or so (not actively accessing the internet) then this will probably work.


brad

Well her complaint is that she is online doing stuff and then she gets kicked off for no reason. I am gogin to call her in the morning. My guess is that she has call waiting and isn't disabling it. Not only does she know nothing about computers, she wants me to fix a problem that may or may not be a problem.


Randy

Mere "activity" might not be enough for that garbage service AOL. She might gave to specifically submit an http request, or something.


Plus, AOL never works right with the latest version of Windows. But then she is a girl and, as they say, "AOL is for bitches."


eLROY

step one, call AOL and have her account cancled.


step two, format the hard drive, her copy of xp is loaded full of fun spyware which reports everything she ever does with her computer or to her computer directly to microsoft.


step three. get yourself a copy of linux, its free. redhat is probably best for new users.


step four install linux, redhat makes that part easy too.


step five get her an account at a real isp, preferably one thats based locally, these tend to have much better tech support than the national isp's, and if things get really screwed up she can take the laptop directly to them in most cases.