...AIM in NT 3.51.

...home.
...freaked forums.
...DOS.
...Windows 3.1x.
...links and resources.
...16-bit internet tools.
...multimedia downloads.
...office tool downloads.
...other utility downloads.
...Windows NT 3.51.
...links and resources.
...assorted downloads.
...Win 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP.
...links and resources.
...32-bit internet tools.
...multimedia downloads.
...office tool downloads.
...other utility downloads.
...misc. computer related.
...my systems.
...my desktops.
...my random crap.
...old update text.
...contact me.

...affiliates.

...freaked addresses:

Main Address (use this for links):
http://www.freaked.org

Backup mirror (slower):
http://freaked.sytes.net

Website is best viewed in... a web browser. Preferably not Netscape 4. With a display of at least 800x600. (it was made on 1024x768, should look okay on 800x600 as well.)

How to get Netscape 4.8 and the included AOL Instant Messenger version 4.3 to work under Windows NT 3.51

Guide by John K. (website)

Here I will explain how I got Netscape 4.8 and it’s included AOL Instant Messenger to (mostly) work under Windows NT 3.51.

Installation

I started off by inserting the files “comctl32.dll and “imm32.dll” (available back here) into Windows NT’s “system32” folder. Once that was done, I went to Netscape’s archive and downloaded the Netscape 4.8 base install. On installation I chose a custom install and checked only “Communicator 4.8” and “multimedia support”; the install went fine and the browser worked.

Running AOL Instant Messenger 4.3

Now once I got the browser up, for the heck of it I clicked on the AOL Instant Messenger button expecting a crash, but low and behold the login screen appeared, so I signed in. It went through the login process fine, however, once the buddylist popped up it crashed, and as I couldn’t figure out why it crashed, I decided to look around in the setup dialog (setup is accessed at the bottom of the login screen). Note that only two tabs in the setup dialog appear right after installation, so you need to run it though the signon process once and let it go ahead and crash first. Once you restart it and go back to setup all of the tabs are there. Thumbing though the tabs I stumbled upon the “ticker” tab, there I decided to uncheck everything related to the ticker such as “show stock ticker in buddy list window” and “show ticker at sign on”. Everything especially under topics needs to be unchecked as it is the 4 things under topics that seem to make it crash. I then went back and tried signing in again and it worked this time… well… mostly anyway. Why mostly you ask? The following things seem to not work right:

* The menu items along the top of the buddy list such as “My IM, People, Help” don’t pull down but menus in the IM windows work (go figure).

* In the “list setup” tab of the buddylist window the “find” button doesn’t work.

Everything else seems to work okay best I can tell. I didn’t test the “Connect To Talk” feature, so I don’t know how that works, if at all. One more thing, when you minimize the buddylist you’ll notice that it disappears, so for this you need to go into the setup dialog and under the “Buddy” tab, place a checkbox next to “show taskbar button when buddy list window is minimized". And that’s it, a working newish version of AOL Instant Messenger.