# Stopping the sound on my AIM
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-the-sound-on-my-aim/464760
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 23, 2008, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-the-sound-on-my-aim/464760 "2008-09-23T00:03:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2008, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-the-sound-on-my-aim/464760/1 "2008-09-23T00:03:48Z")
That’s the question. I use AIM for IMs. At the top of the buddy screen, there’s always some window with an ad, text, whatever. Sometimes, as I inadvertantly mouse-over it, it plays music or increases in size. How do I stop this? CAN I stop this?
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### Author:  [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2008, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-the-sound-on-my-aim/464760/2 "2008-09-23T02:39:17Z")
> [@samclem](#):
>
> That’s the question. I use AIM for IMs. At the top of the buddy screen, there’s always some window with an ad, text, whatever. Sometimes, as I inadvertantly mouse-over it, it plays music or increases in size. How do I stop this? CAN I stop this?
If you are intent on using the AIM client, I don’t know. But there are other clients that support AIM - I use Trillian from [www.ceruleanstudios.com](http://www.ceruleanstudios.com) and do not have the problem that you describe.
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### Author:  [@SkipMagic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkipMagic)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2008, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-the-sound-on-my-aim/464760/3 "2008-09-23T02:48:52Z")
Like **amarone** , I abandoned AIM long ago; however, I use [Pidgin](http://www.pidgin.im/) (free, open-source) as my client. No ads, connects to multiple networks (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, etc…), and you can control the sounds, appearance and other variables.
If you don’t want to abandon your AIM client, I’m not sure how to do it other than to change your hosts file to block the ads–and even then that works only if they don’t change ad server IPs.
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2008, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-the-sound-on-my-aim/464760/4 "2008-09-23T23:12:38Z")
Thanks for the replies. I have no loyalty to AIM, just used them because of laziness.
Off to switch.