As what happens typically each year, every time we set our clocks either forward or backward one hour, access to AOL home Unimatic goes haywire. People have written in during the past 24 hours with all kinds of connection problems.

Keep in mind that we do not officially support and/or troubleshoot Unimatic, nor are we responsible for AOL Unimatic's continual ongoing connection problems.

The #1 problem we see year after year during the time change is what we refer to as a "Corrupted Java Applet". The symptom of this dumb problem is that Unimatic access connection will "hang" in the area where you should see the window appear.

If you have Windows Vista

Click on the round windows icon in the lower left side of your screen, then choose Control Panel, then click on the icon that says "Java. This will open up the Java program. You will see a window appear with some tabs across it. In the General tab, there should be a section toward the bottom called Temporary Internet Files. Go ahead and delete those temporary internet files.  You also might want to clear your web browser 'cache' by following these instructions.  Just for kicks and giggles I would restart the computer before trying to connect to Unimatic again by using www.gounimatic.com.

If you have Windows XP

Click on the Start button, then choose Control Panel. If you see a link that says 'Show Classic View', click on that link to show all the items in the Control Panel. In the Control Panel area, you will see many different icons. Look for one called either "Java" or "Java Plug In". Double-click this icon to open it.

The Java program will open. Depending on what version you have, you need to perform the following steps:

If you have Java 1.4.2 or 3, it will look similar to this:

1. Click the tab across the top that says 'Cache'. Then click 'Clear'. Finally, Click 'Apply'. You can then close this window.
2. Reopen your web browser and try to access Unimatic again. You may test your access by visiting www.gounimatic.com.

If you have Java 1.5, it will look similar to this:

1. Make sure you see the 'General' tab. Click 'Delete Files...'. You will see the following window appear:
   
   
2. Make sure there is a checkmark in all three boxes and then click 'OK'.
3. Click OK again to close out the Java Control Panel.
4. Reopen your web browser and try to access Unimatic again. You may test your access by visiting www.gounimatic.com.

You also might want to clear your web browser 'cache' by following these instructions. 

If you have a Mac

I have no clue on how to fix this but it would be wherever that type of computer stores the setting information for the Java program. (If anyone knows this and also has a Mac, feel free to send me instructions and I will post here)

If the above steps do not resolve the problem, you could try completely removing that Java program from your Add/Remove programs list and then reinstalling everything. However, you are probably better off calling the United Help Desk at this point just to be sure there isn't some other issue going on, particularly if you are receiving a Permission Denied/CompuServe error message or whatever.  Besides, they probably need to hear about these issues and track the number of them, etc.

The other option is to simply wait a day or so (yeah, right) as this type of connection problem seems to always resolve itself after a day or so following a time change.

Again, we did not construct Unimatic. We do not provide tech support for AOL Unimatic access. We are not responsible for maintaining Unimatic. If United and or AOL would like us to troubleshoot/support Unimatic for the thousands of end users, no problem, please have them leave $10,000 in unmarked $20 bills in our domicile mailbox and we will take care of supporting AOL home Unimatic access and answering the dozens of emails we receive daily from frustrated Unimatic users (AKA United Airlines Employees Just Trying to Conduct Company Business With A Minimum Of Hassle) Constructing Unimatic -- Circa 1947