AOL, How I Hate Thee

Well, I finally convinced my parents to get rid of AOL, but now I'm having problems getting it all of the computer.

I deleted the AOL file from Add/Remove Programs (except for 'AOL Uninstaller', which can't uninstall apparently) and then did a Search for 'AOL' and got a few dozen files totaling about 300+ Mb.

Problem is, I can't delete most of them. I get an error message saying:

This may have been my fault, but whatever. We've had AOL since I think way back to AOL 8.0.

Can anyone help me out here? I've heard there are programs to delete unwanted undeleteable files, but I've no idea what they are. Or is there a simpler way like deleting a string in the Reg (which I'd rather not do)?

Also, this is my first post! Been visiting TH for a while, only now decided to join the forums. So don't be so hard on me if this is the wrong place for this post, but I looked around and this seems like the best spot

Or you could simply install the same version of AOL and do a proper uninstall this time...

I did what you recommended. I downloaded the unlocker, but the problem is that I don't see anything such as 'unlock' when I right click an icon.

I did take a closer look this time. The biggest files are reported as empty when I hold the cursor over them, but they still are reported as being around 25 Mb in size. I went another file and manually deleted all the contents, then went back to the search page and still was unable to delete the file. There are even dozens of small text documents that can't be deleted and cannot be 'unlocked'. Many of the files that show up in the search results seem to have been recycled, so maybe that's why . But there are still many that don't seem to have gone to the recycling bin. Though, I'm not sure how to completely remove recycled objects.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong (half of what's wrong with my computer is caused by dumb stuff I did when I first got it and was a total computer newb). Some more info: I do not have any (usable) AOL installation disk in my house, and I'm using a older style of the Windows search engine (can't remember how ... think I had to fiddle with the reg a little).

Sorry about the late reply :?

Anyways, here are the shots of the search. Split exactly in the middle so nothings missing.

Top half.

Bottom half.


Don't know where I got the "300+ Mb"...