AOL Instant Messenger question
 

One of my PCs is used by others, which is cool, but it bugs me when people sign me out of AIM and sign in with their own screen name and then don't sign out again. Any way to 'lock' my screen name into AIM, or turn off the ability to allow someone else to sign in?

can you set the program to not save any passwords, so it'll ask for login information every time the program is brought up?

You can tell AIM to not store your screen name password, but that doesn't keep others from logging in with their own screen name and using the program.

It's almost as if I need a 'hack' that tells AIM to not allow any other screen names to be entered into the program.

How 'bout you just delete any shortcuts associated with the program [Yes, even from the Start Menu and Program Files (on the Start Menu)]?

Then find the main program in it's folder - probably something like: Aim.exe. Right-click on that and click on the shortcut tab then find the Shortcut Key field and associate an easy out of the way key. Something along the lines of F6-9 and F10-12. Excuse the memory, but one of the double digits is utilized by IE as a Full Screen key. The others I skipped well... - F1: Usually brings Windows help; I don't know if you can disassociate that it'll probably take some digging, F2: I believe that brings up Search at least from my Win 95-98 days, F3: Is mostly used as Find Again or Next in any program, F4: Used in conjuction w/ Shift to close windows; again why chance it, F5: Most commonly Refresh in any Internet browser. And, there you have it!

Secrets of the trade from an oldtimer!

Or just log onto the names of the people that sign onto your name and delete their buddy lists. I gaurantee they won't log onto your computer again!

Your best bet would be to create a seperate user account for all others that use your computer to long onto aim. When someone logs on to one user account there are settings saved for the last person that used it. So when they log onto the alternate user account, they can type in any username or password and on your personal user account it will keep your user id and password the same. If they need access to other files on your account, remove the password, or put the files in the shared directory.

to answer your question, there is no way to stop other users from signing on to AIM if you let them onto windows under your user account.

there are several ways to handle it if they sign on with different user accounts, as spived2 already said. my suggestion would be, if you're using windows xp, to turn on the guest account, and switch users/log off when you leave the machine. this way they can get on, but not mess with any of your settings

if they have access to your AIM, they can log you off, it's as simple as that.

what i would do is tell them not to log you off. there are several ways they can log into aim on the same computer WITHOUT logging you off.

deadaim allows you to have multiple IM sessions and multiple buddy lists open. i'm sure other addons allow this feature as well.

you can also log into aim through their java client, which is very good now.

to keep people from logging you out, you need to prohibit access to the program altogether. ways of doing this would include switching out (note: not logging out altogether) of windows and forcing other users to log in under a seperate account. locking your computer is also an option, but that will not allow anyone else to use the computer.