I don't use MSN, so I haven't seen this. Microsoft used to do this in the past when you installed a new version of Internet Explorer, but if you changed the home page back in settings, it would only do it once. But I don't see why MSN would be doing this.
It's very doubtful that AOL is involved in this particular problem, since AOL and MSN are competitors.
Maybe someone will have a specific answer, but meantime I would suggest using AdAware and Spybot Search&Destroy to look for adware and remove it. Adawarehunter may be a site that looks for and interferes with AdAware. There is another little program at Lavasoft, recently released, called Ad-aware Cloak 1.0 that can be installed if some program on the web is shutting down AdAware. That could also be what is happening. You can see the details on that at BetaNews:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail.php3?fid=1075830644wow, kinda like runing counter-counter measures. this battle with spam and spyware is getting out of control.
To all:
thanks for the tips.
What OS are you running...if it's XP Home or Pro then MSMSG.EXE (messenger) loads up if you check your email anyway, and it runs in the background forever until you kill it with the task manager...
Later
MD