AOL eats into your machine, with lots of extraneous software and non-standard settings you don’t need. The easiest way forward, IMHO, is to start again from scratch using a simple ISP (eg Pipex) and a simple, standard, wireless router, such as the Netgear DG834g. It’s not hard to setup and if you don’t use any of the content or cosseting provided by AOL, you can live without them, their software and premium pricing.
The router can be had for around less than £100, with no hard work and a quick check on pricerunner. You can take you pick of ISPs, but Pipex gets a good rep on PPRUNE and does provide a reliable service for about £24/month. There are cheaper ISPs about,
www.adslguide.org.uk is a good place to start hunting, it also has some equipment reviews.
Jumping ship now from AOL will let you skip ISPs in the future for better service/price. For complete portability buy yourself a domain name for your email for around £10/year and you can hop ISP as much as you want.
(I’m assuming that your PC has an Ethernet card installed, if not, you’ll need to buy and install a card, about £20. Sharing your connection through the main PC USB modem and then installing a wireless access point would be just too much hard work for the price of an ADSL wireless router)