Napster and AOL6.0

[BreakWindows]

A friend recently installed both aol6.0 and napster on his new machine, and has not been able to download a single MP3. Every time, he gets between 25% and 75% of the file and then a "transfer error" (although it might be a differant message...he doesn't know much about computers, and was explaining this to me), and he's only running those two programs, not downloading anything else. At first, l figured inconsiderate Napster users were signing-off with active uploads, but this happens every single time, so l doubt it is user-related.

l haven't looked into the problem too much yet, but l'm wondering if:

a)AOL6, in all its botched-network-protocol glory, has done something to mess up file transfers in third-party apps (unintentionally, or otherwise) on his machine.

b)He's using AOL, so his 1kb/s downloads that are so common to the NY area are annoying people and they are all cancelling or signing off.

c)Gremlins.

d)A mysterious case, warranting a whole slew of uninstall-reinstall-rebootting.

Any ideas, before l go tear this thing apart and try to force it to work?

[Sparky625]

Well, I don't know anything specific, but I do know that AOL (6 or otherwise) has a tendency to do things like that, and is just about the most proven method to 'break windows' besides merely installing the OS.

------------------
Thank you for calling the support desk! How may I disconnect you today?

[jaimez]

Only time I heard this happen before was when Netscapes Smartdownload was installed.
If you have this then get rid of it.
Also, remove everything out of your startup in "msconfig" Reboot your machine and try again. Make sure you have no email programs open at the same time, or anti virus software running in the background.

[BreakWindows]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Geneva, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Sparky625:
is just about the most proven method to 'break windows' besides merely installing the OS.
</font>

*rimshot*

Ok, an update to this in case anyone needed the info: as it turns out, l wrongly blamed AOL; he's not using AOL6 to connect, he was using BlueLight, and just had AOL through TCP/IP. l know bluelight is a mess, so maybe it was just switching his IP periodically or something equally annoying...we connected with AOL, and again with Juno, and it worked without a problem (other than taking forever). Now you know, if you're setting up a computer that needs stability in its downloading large files, don't use K-Mart's (mostly)free internet access..

Thanks a lot for the replies though, l hadn't thought of Netscape's Smartdownload <s> bug </s> feature.