I have a 1.7 celeron/ 40Gb/ 512mb running XP pro.
  I have used aol 7.0 faultlessly for 6mths. tried upgrade to 8.0 from cd, xp crashed and rebooted, it also locks up on the first reboot, I had to shut down and do a clean restart. uninstalled and returned to aol 7.0 worked fine.
  Tried upgrade to 8.0 over net. same thing happens, on the brief blue screen, I see a reference to 'atwpkt2.sys' This is a system file which lives in progs./common files/ aolshare/ sysinfo. and also in progs./ aol 7.0/ bdevice. cannot even get aol 8.0 to go as far as detecting the modem (intel 536EP) before it crashes the system as above!
  Any help would be more than welcome.

I'm having the same problem.
Conclusion....Aol is GAY!!!

Hi jnelson74.
  I may have the answer for you, I am using pcCillin firewall and when xp crashed I got the blue screen pointing me to 'atwpkt2.sys' and 'pcc_pfw'
  I struggled to see what the cause was until I read about AOL/using firewalls. It has advice about config of most popular firewalls BUT not pccillin, so I went to their site 'www.antivirus.com' followed links to uk site and searched FAQ's in there is a link to a patch fix to get pcc. pfw to work with aol8 it is a small download and my XP has never crashed since!!
  Hope this helps

Here is the problem I've ran into while fixing many AOL upgrades.  AOL uninstall/Update doesn't work cleanly.  Your best bet is to:

1) Uninstall all instances of AOL from your computer
2) Remove all AOL references in your Registry by using Regedit , then searing on AOL. (Note: if you are not familiar with regedit, do not do this as you may cause serious problems)
3) reboot clean, and install AOL 8.0


This has fixed the AOL 8 upgrade problem I've ran into on many computers.


G'luck,
Banzai

Cheers Banzai,
   I have done that, on several occasions before. I simply found on the last install i could not stop the crashing problem (stated above) from re-occuring. The only solution that worked was the patch from PCcillin. It seems that aol8 is a bit tetchy with firewalls. I have not had any further problems... Oh and a better program for registry removals is 'registrar lite'  from www.resplenence.com give it a go!

I think I have the same problem as u guys

It came up recently when AOL autoupdated itself.  

My Sygate Firewall PRO warned of the change and when I accepted it it reboot the system.  Whne I denied it, nothing happened and everything was fun.

I have PC-Cillin 2000 with all the firewall settings shut off cause Sygate was active.  Think there is a problem I should be worried about?

Hi shadow'
  I think the best course of action is to go to the Sygate web-site, here you should find a f.a.q. or forum that might point to any problems running your firewall with aol8.
  If Sygate is on top of any problems it should post a patch to download and update your f'wall software. i think that these probs are aol's fault, but no amount of re-installing will help, it is down to the respective firewall manufacturer to make it's product work under aol8, but to aol's credit it does list some fixes for firewall probs, (I cant quite remember where, but give all of the above a go, and the best of luck!
   Dazzer01