I’m sure all you computer users and geeks out there have faced this scenario many times before—you install a new program, and suddenly your system goes into a hysterical state, or even worse, goes belly-up.
A few days ago, I decided to upgrade to the latest version of Messenger Plus! which is a third-party add-on for Windows Live Messenger. This latest version (4.80) as Patchou the author assures us, is fully compatible with the latest WLM. Alright, so I download Plus! and install it—no hiccups there. After that I click on my Start menu button to access another program. Wait a second, what’s this? Most of my Start menu program shortcuts have vanished! OMG!
I check in my C:\Program Files folder and am relieved that all my program folders are still there. Check the Vista Programs and Features thingy and yes, all my programs are listed. It’s only the shortcuts that have disappeared into thin air—that meant I had to spend an hour or two recreating them. Trust me, it’s no fun.
After accomplishing this arduous task, I pause and take a step back (yes, I’m fond of doing that, not literally though). I suppose my first reaction would be to blame Plus! for heaping this calamity on my system. But, and this is a big but—I’ve been using Plus! for years now, and it has never given me any trouble. I scour the Plus! forums and no, doesn’t seem like anyone else has met with this predicament. And as stated in the home page over 60 million people use Plus!
I reason to myself—no, it can’t be Plus! I decide to use Vista’s sfc (system file checker). You have to run this utility in a command box (and it has saved my bacon a few times before, even during my XP days). So I go to Run, type cmd, and a command window opens. Type sfc /scannow and system file checker dutifully runs. This is the part where I go do something else (I don’t like watching grass grow). After some time I come back to the computer and find that it has finished. And what do you know—sfc reports that it has found some file corruption in my system (or something to that effect) and has made repairs. I type Exit to close the command window.
Now here’s the scary part. I uninstall Plus! (an earlier version) completely, and reboot. I then install version 4.80, the installation goes without a hitch; remember not to install the sponsor program, which is adware. I start WLM up, and Plus! is integrated into it. Twiddle the settings a little bit and check tabbed chats—they work now, yay! Check my Start menu program shortcuts, everything’s there—great!
There’s a moral to this story somewhere.
