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Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas, Dr. Bombay Computer Column: Now That AOL Has Got You Online, They Don't Want to Lose You

Posted on: Thursday, 16 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Dr. Emilio Bombay, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Mar. 16--Now that AOL has got you online, they don't want to lose you

Dear Dr. Bombay: What is the phone number for AOL to cancel their service? No, I do not have it -- my idiot son does, but he has moved and no longer has a land line. He is still being charged.

-- American Dad

Dear Dad: It's not like America Online makes it easy for people who want to dump the service. It's as hard to do as getting me to buy a round of drinks.

I can understand the AOL philosophy. Once they've got you on the hook they don't want to let you go. I imagine most people give up before they find a way to do it. Your kid probably did. Maybe that's why AOL has so many millions of subscribers. They've been beaten into submission.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were cancellation instructions in an easy-to-find place somewhere on AOL? Or a nice, big "Cancel My Stinking Account" button right on the tool bar? Dream on. What you can find, however, is a phone number in possibly the smallest font size imaginable on the subscription page at www.aol.com: (888) 698-6892. I also found (888) 265-8008 and (800) 827-6364 by poking around the Internet.

Be prepared for the coldly impersonal voice of an automated answering system. It's one of those voice-recognition deals, so try not to drink too heavily before calling. I know how badly you slur your words.

Say "cancel." Say "billing" if that doesn't work. You'll have to provide account info. Then be prepared to sit there with the phone to your ear for a long, long time. Most people give up here, though. I don't want to accuse AOL of doing that on purpose. I'm sure they really only have one live attendant.

When you finally get to talk to a human, you'll have to answer a bunch of questions about why you hate AOL, then you get the prize: a recorded legal announcement verifying that your account will be closed. Whatever you do after that, don't try to log in to AOL again or you'll have to go through this a second time.

Dear Dr. Bombay: I try to delete unwanted files from my hard drive to keep down the clutter. I just found hundreds of files in the Windows XP temporary file folder. What kind of files end up here, and is it safe to delete them?

-- Captain Obvious

Dear Captain: Gee, I wonder what kind of files you'd find in a temporary files folder. Could it be . . . permanent ones? No, that can't be right. Gosh, I'm stumped on this one.

Before you go poking around on your own, why not let XP's built-in file cleanup do the job for you? Open My Computer, then right-click on the hard-drive icon. Pick "Properties" from the menu, and click on the "Disk Cleanup" button on the dialog box that pops up.

Windows will check for files that can be dumped, then give you the option of which to kill. There's stuff there like downloaded applets, stored Web pages (for quick retrieval of pages you go to a lot), files leftover from software installations, info stored by programs when they were running and a bunch of other things. It's all pretty much fair game.

The second tab in the cleanup dialog has buttons for removing useless Windows components (like the games), programs you never use and restore points.

Dear Dr. Bombay: You have mentioned in your previous articles that "nuking" one's hard drive periodically will keep it running well. You must have done this nuking after too many vodka martinis. Why would someone want to erase the whole hard drive? All they need to do is run preventive maintenance programs regularly, i.e., defrag, anti-spyware, registry cleaning, disk cleanup, etc.

-- No Nukes

Dear No Nukes: First of all, there is absolutely no such thing as too many vodka martinis. Secondly, nuking a drive has the same effect as trading in your battered old Corolla at the end of a lease and picking up a new one. You start from scratch, and you have another few years to mess something up again.

Defragging, spyware scans and all the rest are valuable, but they simply don't clean up all the detritus of unused programs, useless Registry keys, bungled installations and stealthy "helper" programs that eat up resources and are generally loaded without your knowledge. You get to start from scratch and try to do things correctly this time. And for me, who has to experiment with all sorts of things to answer questions readers can't figure out by themselves, it's an absolutely necessary process.

Dear Dr. Bombay: In a recent column, you suggested someone "nuke" the hard drive to rid it of all sorts of scattered debris, etc., and to speed up its performance. I carefully followed your suggestions, read and researched all the sites you suggested, plowed through Microsoft's updates and bulletins and finally had the nerve to do it. Eureka! The process went smoothly, the reinstallation of Windows XP just fine, and the reinstallation of only the programs I use and need very well. My computer now runs like a thoroughbred at the track. I am so happy and feel so empowered! I was ready to cart it off to some repair place to see why it was running as slowly as frozen mud. Instead, I did it all myself, saved myself a bundle of money and feel like a real computer whiz.

-- Satisfied Customer

Dear Customer: See there, No Nukes? I told you so. Nyah, nyah, nyah!

Dear Dr. Bombay: I am using Windows XP, when I click on the printer icon at top of page, the fax option comes up, and I have not been able to find how to make it go to the printer again. Please help.

-- Just the Fax

Dear Just: Your default printer is set to be the fax program. Go to Printers and Faxes in the Start menu, then right-click the icon representing your printer and select "Set as default."

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Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas)

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