AOL 8

Welcome back

Setting up AOL 8

From the installer to the welcome screen

The client stays original. Nothing is patched, nothing is cracked - what changes is underneath it: the dial-up driver and the browser engine, both of which stopped working on modern Windows a long time ago.

Plan for a quarter of an hour.

Before you start

• An account. Create one in the account centre first - you will need the screen name and password in step 4.
• AOL 8 itself. The original installer, any language.
• The setup package. From the download page.
• Administrator rights. A service and a network adapter need them.
• On Windows 7 and newer: the WebView2 runtime, x86 build. The setup checks for it and says so if it is missing. Without it the browser falls back to Internet Explorer, which still works but renders like 2001.

1. Install AOL 8

Run the original installer and let it finish. Do not start the client yet - and if its own setup wizard offers to find an access number, close it. It would be dialling a phone network that has not existed for twenty years.

2. Run the setup package

Unpack it, close AOL if it is running, and double-click Setup.cmd. The User Account Control prompt comes from there.

Leave all three boxes ticked and press Install:

• Remove leftovers of the old AOL driver. On every start the client creates a device for its old dial-up driver. If a 64-bit version of that driver is still in the Windows driver store, Windows binds the two together - and then either blocks it, or loads it and crashes the machine on the first dial attempt. The setup clears that out first.
• Tunnel adapter. Replaces the 2002 driver with a signed, current one.
• Browser engine. Puts the modern engine into the client folder.

If the setup ends in amber and asks for a reboot, reboot before going on. Something of the old driver was still held by the kernel, and starting AOL before the restart would simply bring it back.

3. Point the client at the server

Start AOL 8 and open the connection settings - the sign-on screen has them, before you sign in.

There you will find the field Server name, next to Proxy Server. Put in:

aol.puppenspieler.net

Leave the proxy fields alone. The browser gets its proxy from the setup package, not from here.

4. Sign on

Enter your screen name and password and sign on. The tunnel comes up during sign-on, then the welcome screen builds.

If the client needs administrator rights to get through sign-on, start it as administrator once - on some Windows versions the first run needs it.

When something goes wrong

What you see	What it is
Crashes a few seconds after start	Leftovers of the old driver. Run the setup again and use Check leftovers.
"Driver could not be loaded"	Same cause. Memory integrity is doing its job and blocking the old driver.
Sign-on hangs or times out	Check the Server name field, then the status page.
Welcome screen loads, browser stays empty	The WebView2 runtime is missing, or an older browser window is still running in the background.

Still stuck: the documentation goes deeper, and the contact page says where to write.