AIM Upgrade freezes, firewall problem

[MonsterBaby]

Hello,
Today I got a message while on AIM saying that a newer version was available, I believe it was the 5.9 version.
Anyhow, I decided to upgrade, big mistake.
After the upgrade, I could not sign on AIM, the whole computer would freeze up. I couldn't uninstall, because it said that AIM was still running. Even by hitting control alt delete, I could not get AIM to shut down. I couldn't even shut the computer down the typical way, I had to shut down by holding in the button on the modem.
Well finally I think I may have figured out that it is that norton's firewall that is freezing up the machine. So I disabled the firewall, and I can get aim to log on.
But I don't want the firewall disabled for good!! So I can go into Norton's disable the firewall, sign on AIM, turn the firewall back on and I seem to be good to go. However, if I want to sign off AIM and switch to a new user name, I have to remember to disable the firewall. If I forget, then the whole computer freezes up again. It's a mess.

I am very sorry I upgraded this. I want to go back to the old version that I used to have which I believe was 5.5.
For me to do that, will I need to uninstall this latest version, and can someone point me to the download for the next latest version besides the 5.9?
thank you.

you will need to uninstall the current version. it will ask you if you want to delete user profiles. make sure you don't because you can reuse them when installing AIM 5.5. just to make sure you should backup the following (if using Windows XP):

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Aim contains profiles

Start >> Run >> regedit >> HKEY_CURRENT_USER >> Software >> America Online >> AOL Instant Messenger >> Current Version >> right click on Users >> click Export >> save the keys as aimusers.reg (if after installing AIM 5.5 users don't show up in the Sign On Screen double click on the aimusers.reg file)

http://jon8rfc.homeip.net/aim/versions/ should have the AIM version you are looking for. you may also want to try the latest 5.9 version (if you havn't already) which may solve the problem (for this you won't need to uninstall the current version).

the next version is going to be AIM Triton. it is also available for download from jon8rfc's site. it is still in beta stages so it may not be as useable as AIM 5.x.

[MonsterBaby]

Thank you, thank for taking the time to help me.
In the meantime I was so darn frustrated before I saw your post, and I'm not that computer savvy, and I was at my wits end.
I'm running windows xp and then thought about system restore.
So I ran the restore, to restore computer back to yesterday.
And it worked!!!