Remove the Ad From Your AIM Buddy List

This is my first Instructable and it's on how to remove the ad from the top of your AIM buddy list. Personally I can't stand the thing and if you can't either.. or just want to get rid of it, carry on to step one!


This image is a screenshot of my version of AIM (6.5.11.1). As you can see the ad is gone! I also just painted over my screen name above the "Enter status message here..." text box. It's not a side effect of the Instructable. Enjoy!

Make sure AIM is not open (not just signed out). Right click the AIM icon in the lower right hand corner if it's there and click "Exit AIM".

Open Notepad, click File --> Open, and navigate to
C:\Program Files\AIM6\services\imApp\your_version\content\bl\aolBuddyListAd.js
"your_version" is your current version of AIM, not the name of a folder =)
hit CTRL + F and search for "adcontainer" and change "collapsed=false" to "collapsed=true" .
Save the file.

Hopefully you're still in Notepad, if not... open it again. Click File --> Open .. and navigate to
C:\Program Files\AIM6\services\imApp\your_version\resources\en-US\strings.xml

remember the note from the previous step about "your_version"
hit CTRL + F and search for "AimAdRotateInterval"

Change the values that are there for these four lines to zeros so they look like this"

<string name="bl.AimAdRotateInterval">0</string>
<string name="bl.adMagic">0</string>
<string name="bl.adHeight">0</string>
<string name="bl.adWidth">0</string>

Save the file, exit Notepad... start AIM.. and enjoy your ad-less buddy list!