Today I was working on a friend’s computer as it had stopped working about a week before. It turns out they had installed an update from AOL. It was their "updated connectivity" software. During the install it apparently corrupted the TCP/IP (Internet Protocol) stack. I knew I would need to use Google in the end, but wanted to give AOL the benefit of the doubt.
So I called AOL Tech Support. Explained the situation (after being used as a ping pong ball between AOL and SBC DSL) to the technician. After a while of discussion with the tech and the supervisor it turns out that AOL won’t help me fix the problem that the AOL software created. Apparently it puts AOL into a position of liablity to fix the TCP/IP stack that was corrupted due to the "updated" connectivity software. AOL’s solution was to have me call the manufacturer of the computer. The issue here was the computer was out of warranty.
So to make a longer story a bit shorter, I said "Thank you," to AOL for a lack of help, took the computer home, googled how to fix the issue. Twenty minutes after I got home the issue was resolved, the most recent version of AOL was being downloaded, installed, tested and the system rebooted with Windows Updates. It took me all of ten minutes to fix the TCP/IP issue.
Oh, you want to know the link? Sure. Here is the Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
KB 817571: You receive an "An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket" error message when you try to connect to a network