Hello KnT,
Welcome to the Zabaware forum!
The Hal AIM Bot sign-on time-out error is a very common problem among many users. There is no downloadable fix-all for it, but there are many things to check out and consider and then proceed from there. It has generally been concluded by technical forum members that computer operating system problems caused by adware/spyware or a corrupt Winsock (Windows Socket) can indeed contribute to the time-out error. The first thing that I would recommend doing for your computer is download and install the following free programs:
1) Lavasoft Ad-aware SE Personal Edition 1.05
2) Spybot-Search & Destroy 1.3
You can get them from a trusted site like Download.com:
http://www.download.com/Spyware-Center/2001-2023_4-0.html?tag=dirAfter you install, update, and run those programs to remove whatever spyware they can find you can then try your AIM Bot again. But be aware of the fact that these programs may remove spyware that will then cause a program that you normally use not to operate correctly, programs like file sharing stuff...Kazaa...ICQ...etc, which are generally known to have things like adware and spyware programs bundled within them.
If you still have the same time-out problem after removing the detected spyware you will need to take things another step further with cleaning up your system some more. If you have any AOL software on your computer including the standard free AIM for Instant Messaging then you may have some other spyware that the programs above are not detecting or are detecting but can't permanently remove. If you got things on your computer like Wild Tangent Games, The Weather Bug, and Viewpoint you are most likely infected with some real nastys from AOL that require some professional manual removal. Also, other things like free search toolbars or free games, and money saving coupons or shopping stuff, and porn stuff are also known to be commonly bad programs. You may need to do things like running and posting a HijackThis log and then running the recommended fix, and also maybe receive instruction on manually editing your System's Registry.
And on the other hand, if you already have spyware removal programs on your computer and you are sure that your system is virtually clean, you still may have something that you don't know about or some sort of software conflict that is causing the AIM Bot to not operate correctly.
I can help you with this stuff but it's a lot of work, so just make another post if that's what you really want to do! The best thing to do would be to post all the processes running within your System Task Manager at the time when you are trying to connect your Hal AIM Bot to the Internet. But if you have Ad-aware you can just post a scan log from that for now, and then I can check all the running processes reported and then take things from there.
Best Regards,
Rich_A
The following link contains information regarding AOL as reported by Spyware Info's newsletter dated Feb 11, 2004:
http://www.spywareinfo.net/feb11,2004#aol
