My son, who had a different problem with IE and AOL (see a topic about Monaronadora, which he's now solved, rang AOL on Saturday and someone there told him they are having problems in all areas of the country with their ISP.
As he only signed up for AOL 2 weeks ago, he told them to cancel it and he's choosing another ISP supplier. He also downloaded Mozilla Firefox and he said that is much quicker. It seems a combination of AOL not working properly and IE being older and not having been brought up to the standard of Mozilla Firefox could be the problem.
Lizzie