The problem I posted was that the "You have email" message changed to an American voice saying curtly, "You got mail" after I installed the AOL toolbar. I didn't want to delete the message, I wanted to revert to what it was before (with the silky tones of Joanna Lumley). I'm using webmail on this PC so don't have the AOL software installed (that's on my PC at home).

Eventually, this is what I did:

Control Panel --> Add/Remove Progs --> uninstalled AOL Toolbar

Backed up registry

Ran registry cleaner & deleted the few AOL files that the Uninstall didn't remove (perhaps inevitably, the AOL program hadn't removed itself properly using Uninstall)!

Deleted the AOL page from the home page list in Internet Options

Restarted PC

Clicked IE to start internet & logged on to my AOL webmail by clicking through manually from www.aol.co.uk

Copied & pasted URL of my webmail into the home page list of Internet Options

Closed IE

Restarted IE. AOL came up as it used to with Ms Lumley telling me "You have email" (so much gentler & more grammatically correct)

I may not have needed to follow all of those steps, but at least one of them was necessary as it's now working as I want it. The problem arose as soon as I'd installed the AOL toolbar, so why on earth AOL assume that when people install their toolbar they want their settings altered without being asked is beyond me. I'll manage without AOL's toolbar - the google one is just as good.

My thanks to those of you who read my initial post & especially to those who tried to help.

Martin Berry