I did a bit of research on this when Artic Wolf originally posted and mentioned the Beta version of the AOL Spyware Protection. Unfortunately, it appears that AOL dumped the original program that was being written for them when it had too many issues and switched to including a re-branded existing program (Pest Patrol?, I believe Lonny mentioned) in its place.
The problem is that those who had installed the original Beta probably simply installed the new program over the old, leaving remnants of the Beta on the PC. Since the two programs were probably totally different, it's likely the old program remained at least to some extent as you discovered. Probably the Beta should have been uninstalled before installing the final released version.
Since the original program never went past Beta stage, most of AOL support is probably unaware that it even existed. Even if they are, they may not acknowledge it's existence since it was never officially released or supported.
This means those who tried it may be left in exactly your situation. Other then removing the old program remnants by hand, which would be extremely difficult without original installation info, a complete PC reformat and re-install is probably the only way to truly clean it out. I could find nothing on the Web describing the original Beta other then that it existed, though it's possible there may be information on the AOL web sites that only members can access.
In either case, only AOL users are likely to have this info since virtually no one else would have ever had access to the orignal Beta. Since most AOL users are non-technical, it's not likely anyone ever analyzed the Beta, so only AOL itself could probably provide it. This is why Beta software has warnings, since exactly such situations can occur, though they're pretty rare these days.
I didn't pipe up before because I thought you'd gone to talk to AOL and would get an answer there, but since that hasn't worked I thought I'd mention it now. I don't remember where I found this info, but I believe it was some sort of article about the Beta.
This is interesting, I just found it while trying to find the original article.
http://www.spywaredata.com/spyware/spyware-adware-about.php
What's most interesting about it is this paragraph from a different article on another site.
AOL on Tuesday introduced its own version of anti-spyware protection from Aluria Software. The new feature for AOL's nearly 25 million subscribers will be available when the Dulles, Va.-based online giant debuts AOL 9.0 in the "next few weeks."
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3296851
Since it appears the same person developed both products, they were probably close, but not quite the same. Unless the Aluria product was the original Beta and AOL later replaced it with Pest Patrol, which I thought was the basis of the current version myself.
Either way, your issue is the same. Without information or an unistaller for the earlier version a complete re-install of the OS after format is probably the only way to completely remove it.
