Messenger
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A friend of mine who is not that much into computers (OK, he does not understand anything at it) asked me to solve a problem for him: his MSN (well Messenger) crashes every time he fires it up. After a quick check, the app definitely throws a memory exception after it is started. As my friend is not even able to install something by himself, I suspect some windows update to have messed up the app. Now it becomes weird: I tried to uninstall and reinstall it, but it still crashes. He has XP SP3 on the machine, so I took care to install the last compatible version of Messenger with XP. Another weird thing I noticed is that his Internet Explorer would sometimes fail to save downloaded files -- downloads, but does not save the temp file (which made the whole reinstall thingy not so easy). Could it be that an update screwed up the machine at this point ? I checked for malware, but it is all clean. The worst is probably that he did not make any back-up of the initial state of his machine when he bought it, so I cannot even make a fresh Windows install, since he has no copy of it. :sigh:. Any piece of advice about the messenger or the IE problem ? I did not check for IE, but googled everything about installing or toubleshooting Messenger but could not come with something useful. Plus it is more and more complicated to find search results about XP, everything is about either vista or weven...
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A friend of mine who is not that much into computers (OK, he does not understand anything at it) asked me to solve a problem for him: his MSN (well Messenger) crashes every time he fires it up. After a quick check, the app definitely throws a memory exception after it is started. As my friend is not even able to install something by himself, I suspect some windows update to have messed up the app. Now it becomes weird: I tried to uninstall and reinstall it, but it still crashes. He has XP SP3 on the machine, so I took care to install the last compatible version of Messenger with XP. Another weird thing I noticed is that his Internet Explorer would sometimes fail to save downloaded files -- downloads, but does not save the temp file (which made the whole reinstall thingy not so easy). Could it be that an update screwed up the machine at this point ? I checked for malware, but it is all clean. The worst is probably that he did not make any back-up of the initial state of his machine when he bought it, so I cannot even make a fresh Windows install, since he has no copy of it. :sigh:. Any piece of advice about the messenger or the IE problem ? I did not check for IE, but googled everything about installing or toubleshooting Messenger but could not come with something useful. Plus it is more and more complicated to find search results about XP, everything is about either vista or weven...
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A friend of mine who is not that much into computers (OK, he does not understand anything at it) asked me to solve a problem for him: his MSN (well Messenger) crashes every time he fires it up. After a quick check, the app definitely throws a memory exception after it is started. As my friend is not even able to install something by himself, I suspect some windows update to have messed up the app. Now it becomes weird: I tried to uninstall and reinstall it, but it still crashes. He has XP SP3 on the machine, so I took care to install the last compatible version of Messenger with XP. Another weird thing I noticed is that his Internet Explorer would sometimes fail to save downloaded files -- downloads, but does not save the temp file (which made the whole reinstall thingy not so easy). Could it be that an update screwed up the machine at this point ? I checked for malware, but it is all clean. The worst is probably that he did not make any back-up of the initial state of his machine when he bought it, so I cannot even make a fresh Windows install, since he has no copy of it. :sigh:. Any piece of advice about the messenger or the IE problem ? I did not check for IE, but googled everything about installing or toubleshooting Messenger but could not come with something useful. Plus it is more and more complicated to find search results about XP, everything is about either vista or weven...
Not an answer to the install question but if he just wants to keep in contact with MSN contacts then he could try a web based IM such as www.meebo.com
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A friend of mine who is not that much into computers (OK, he does not understand anything at it) asked me to solve a problem for him: his MSN (well Messenger) crashes every time he fires it up. After a quick check, the app definitely throws a memory exception after it is started. As my friend is not even able to install something by himself, I suspect some windows update to have messed up the app. Now it becomes weird: I tried to uninstall and reinstall it, but it still crashes. He has XP SP3 on the machine, so I took care to install the last compatible version of Messenger with XP. Another weird thing I noticed is that his Internet Explorer would sometimes fail to save downloaded files -- downloads, but does not save the temp file (which made the whole reinstall thingy not so easy). Could it be that an update screwed up the machine at this point ? I checked for malware, but it is all clean. The worst is probably that he did not make any back-up of the initial state of his machine when he bought it, so I cannot even make a fresh Windows install, since he has no copy of it. :sigh:. Any piece of advice about the messenger or the IE problem ? I did not check for IE, but googled everything about installing or toubleshooting Messenger but could not come with something useful. Plus it is more and more complicated to find search results about XP, everything is about either vista or weven...
Maybe a hardware issue? Bad drive?
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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Maybe a hardware issue? Bad drive?
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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Yes, I suppose so. As I have never used it myself, I was not much of a help for him ("Can I access it online ? Can I use something else to check my messages?" :~ ).
Rage wrote:
Can I access it online ?
Yup. http://www.ebuddy.com/[^] http://web-messenger.eu/[^] http://www.messengerfx.com/[^] etc.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Not an answer to the install question but if he just wants to keep in contact with MSN contacts then he could try a web based IM such as www.meebo.com
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Rage wrote:
Can I access it online ?
Yup. http://www.ebuddy.com/[^] http://web-messenger.eu/[^] http://www.messengerfx.com/[^] etc.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
All you have to do is give your login details to a third party and you can access it online! No thanks...
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A friend of mine who is not that much into computers (OK, he does not understand anything at it) asked me to solve a problem for him: his MSN (well Messenger) crashes every time he fires it up. After a quick check, the app definitely throws a memory exception after it is started. As my friend is not even able to install something by himself, I suspect some windows update to have messed up the app. Now it becomes weird: I tried to uninstall and reinstall it, but it still crashes. He has XP SP3 on the machine, so I took care to install the last compatible version of Messenger with XP. Another weird thing I noticed is that his Internet Explorer would sometimes fail to save downloaded files -- downloads, but does not save the temp file (which made the whole reinstall thingy not so easy). Could it be that an update screwed up the machine at this point ? I checked for malware, but it is all clean. The worst is probably that he did not make any back-up of the initial state of his machine when he bought it, so I cannot even make a fresh Windows install, since he has no copy of it. :sigh:. Any piece of advice about the messenger or the IE problem ? I did not check for IE, but googled everything about installing or toubleshooting Messenger but could not come with something useful. Plus it is more and more complicated to find search results about XP, everything is about either vista or weven...
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Why not extract his windows cd-key and then download OEM Windows XP with integrated SP3 and do the fresh install?
Trust is a weakness.
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As long as his key is legal yes it is. The physical disk doesn't matter it's the key that makes the install legal / illegal. Watch out tho if you reinstall it might be possible that you can't activate due to many prior activations, every key has it's limit (standard is / was 3). If that happens just call the number they give you, after about 10 min you'll get a person and explain why you had to reinstall (say virus) and they'll give you another 3 activations. (At least that used to work without problems, but haven't had to do that in a while now so...)
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Yes it is legal, installation media does not matter, CD-Key is the main component when deciding for legalities (as Tom Deketelaere mentioned). The only catch is that you need an OEM version (probably). One more thing, isn't there a sticker on a laptop bottom side with cd-key written on it? BTW there is a nice catch (at least with Dell branded computers): the cd-key on sticker is different than the one that comes with pre-installed windows. This effectively means that you have 2 cd-keys (-. So you can use embedded cd-key for re-install and the one on sticker for a virtual machine. At least this works for me.
Trust is a weakness.
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Yes it is legal, installation media does not matter, CD-Key is the main component when deciding for legalities (as Tom Deketelaere mentioned). The only catch is that you need an OEM version (probably). One more thing, isn't there a sticker on a laptop bottom side with cd-key written on it? BTW there is a nice catch (at least with Dell branded computers): the cd-key on sticker is different than the one that comes with pre-installed windows. This effectively means that you have 2 cd-keys (-. So you can use embedded cd-key for re-install and the one on sticker for a virtual machine. At least this works for me.
Trust is a weakness.
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All you have to do is give your login details to a third party and you can access it online! No thanks...
viaducting wrote:
All you have to do is give your login details to a third party and you can access it online! No thanks...
You can also do it through the MSN site, but they've moved the page I used to use, and I couldn't be @rsed to jump through the log-in and navigation hoops that that most p1ss-balling of sites makes you jump through.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!