After installing AIM the other day my Windows Vista install started acting very weird. It all started on the reboot after installation, for some reason my wireless adapter was no longer connecting to the service. When I tried to connect to a network or do anything pertaining to “networking” the computer would slow to a crawl, stop responding, throw the blue screen of death, then restart; or it would just hand forever. This is a huge problem! Having a laptop without wireless access is pretty useless imo, so I needed to find a fix for this issue ASAP. After some searching I came upon this article on Microsoft Technet, which is extremely long and conversational, so I figure I’d post the important part.

I was able to regain wireless access and normal computer activity by following these steps:

1. Right click “Computer”
2. Click “Manage”
3. Under “System Tools” double click “Local Users and Groups”
4. Click “Groups”
5. Right click “Administrators”
6. Click “Add to group…”
7. Click “Add”
8. Click “Advanced”
9. Click “Find Now”
10. Double click “Local Service” and click “Ok”
11. “NT Authority / Local Service” should now show up in the list
12. Click “Ok” to finish
13. Close computer management and reboot!

That should restore your network functionality and general computer-peace overall. It is important that this bug is not directly tied to AIM- it is triggered by a combination of application and/or services it just happens that in my situation, it was triggered by AIM. So AOL is still crap, but in this case the finger is pointing at Microsoft.

Download and install. Wow the interface is a lot nicer than before but what is with all these extra services and background processes it has installed without my consent? And why is there and advertisement built into the chat window that plays annoying sounds when I rollover it with my mouse? These are the reasons I hate the native AIM Client.

So let’s fix it. I did some googling and found AIM Ad Hack it is an all-in-one downloader and patch program. It will download the latest AIM Client from aim.com, install it, and patch it. Here is a small portion of the malicious programs it will be removing from what would otherwise be installed if you did not run the hack!:

After you run the install and patch you will have a much less obtrusive, more efficient AIM Client that is the most compatible client out there (as opposed to 3rd party clients). Here is an example of how the actual client UI is effected by the patch:

before patch (left) | after patch (right)

That’s it! If you prefer the older version of AIM you can perform a similar patch using DeadAIM to remove the ads and background services.