AOL Instant Messenger Icon Pest

[Bluto]

Hi ALl....

Couple general questions actually.

First....I have that pesky AOL Instant Messenger icon down in the system tray (by the clock). How can I get rid of it in the tray without deleting the program?

Second.....what's the extension of the all the passwords windows keeps on file? I thought it was somehting like *.psw??

And...lastly...I've heard there are places in windows...files or whatever that store deleted items or record of what files have been accessed over a given period of time. Was curious about that when a friend of mine was asking about the security of AOL's activities.

Any ideas on these would be cool......thanks!

Bluto

 

[Ladi]

1) You can not get rid of the tray icon through AIM (though you can get rid of the taskbar button in Options>Preferences>Buddy>UNcheck 'Show taskbar button when...minimized...'). I don't know about any 3rd party apps that can do it.
2) I think you're referring to *.pwl in win9x
3) Not sure quite what you're talking about...

~Ladi

 

[Bluto]

Hi Ladi....

Thanks for the info!

It's ok about the 3rd one..no biggie. The second one helped alot and the first one...sheesh...why am I going backwards!

...anyway....the box you mentioned is alredy UN-checked and the icon is still thre in the tray next to the clock. There must be some way to get it out of tehre and I've tried everything *I* can think of, but am drawing a blank. Any other ideas?????

Anyone else?


Thanks....!!

Bluto

 

[Supergax]

Ladi is correct, there is no way to hide the icon. Well, there could be. The only thing I could think of is a 3rd party shareware or freeware program that may hide system tray icons. I'm sure there are some floating around someplace.

 

[BT7990]

Try this little program called startup cop
Startup Cop
Also try MSCONFIG at the run window, go to start up and try and disable it there.

 

[Bluto]

Does "msconfig" work with NT as well?

I can't seem to find it when I try and post it in 'run'. I'll try the Start Cop and see if that works, but I thougt there was some setting soemwhere that allowed ones to remove those pesky icons from that part of the task bar.

Thanks for the ideas and siggestions.....

Bluto

 

[Ladi]

Are you trying to hide the icon WHILE running AIM? or just stop AIM from loading up entirely? If you don't want AIM to run at all, go to Options > Preferences > General and uncheck "Start AIM when Windows starts"

~Ladi

 

[Bluto]

...ooops...I mean 'suggestions'....sheeesh.

Ummm...Ladi.....I mean I'd like to eliminate the icon from appearing in the tray while AIM is running. If I right click on that icon and select "Exit" the icon goes away, but the program also ends. I'd like to let it run in the background and have it minimize along the bottom like most other minimized programs do....the 'large' rectangular button on the task bar. That I prefer than the tiny icon sitting next to the clock in the tray. Yeah I know I'm weird.....but hey....'I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam'.....yanno? : )

Thanks!

Bluto

 

[Ladi]

Only posted because startup cop and msconfig aren't what you're looking for

~Ladi

 

[Bluto]

Hmmm....then unless someone knows of a registry hack, I'll have to live with it?

Bluto

 

[Namuna]

Those AOL BASTARDS but their AIM.EXE into the Reg. That's why there's no easy way to rid of the thing.

You can do a find in regedit.exe and search for 'aim.exe'. you may find a few instances, but only delete the one located in the Run key (this is the location in Reg where a file can be loaded at system boot).

 

[AC]

AIM was never designed to run as a service...you'll need to reverse engineer the .exe file, figure out how it works, make drastic modifications to it and accompanying .dll files and the like, then recompile it into a .exe. By the time you figure out how to do this, several versions of AIM would have come out, and you'd have to start over again to attempt to get those to work...in short it's a never ending process, a no win situation, unless of course you have access to the AIM source code and countless weeks to figure out what needs to be done...AOL must have herds of software programmers and security experts to prevent this...we've already seen how AOL has kept MSN Messenger and other AIM clones from accessing AIM servers...they are that good...

I was ranting. Most of it is probably true though. I haven't heard of any hacks to modify AIM in that way.

 

[HotWire]

Well said AC.......totally agree..... for the trouble and time not to mention expertise you would need to pull that off......well lets put it this way you would be on to bigger and better things to waste your time on if you had the knowledge required

 

[Rajat]

Hi,
If u r using win98 then you can go to start>programs>accessories>system tools>system information. Go to the tools button and click on system configuration. In the start up tab uncheck the entry that relates to AOL. Close everything and restart your PC. You will not see the AOL icon in the system tray.
Cheers

Rajat