Tag Archives: Windows Live Messenger

The Internet = Oxygen Part 2

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This has never happened to me before, since going online about 12 years ago. I’m referring to an Internet outage which occurred locally in Malaysia yesterday. It affected thousands of users in four states—Perlis, Kedah, Perak, and Penang. I’ve learnt through experience that if my Internet conks out unexpectedly, the fault is usually at the ISP’s end, unless I forgot to pay my broadband bill (I have that on auto payment anyway). It went south about 4:30 PM local time yesterday, and dang—it was hard for me! To be cut off from the rest of the world, yikes! No email, no Windows Live Messenger, no browsing, ugh.

So I did the most reasonable thing. Called up the ISP, of course I had to wait—I guess they were deluged with calls from thousands of irate and frustrated Net users. I suppose it’s no point for me to vent my anger on them—when I finally spoke to someone they told me to wait it out. I go to bed, awake today, and boot up the computer. Any Internet? Nope, no luck. Still out. Called them again, they gave me the stock reply that their technicians were hard at work on it. Patience, patience. Alright, let me see—I’ll go do a mundane chore like ironing clothes. I pop in a Mahler CD into my computer—ah bliss. Bernard Haitink conducting Mahler’s 6th with the Berlin Philharmonic (what a fantastic performance). Soon I’m engrossed (yeah, believe it or not) with my ironing, until Network Magic beeps and that’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard—the Internet’s back! Yay!

What with the damaged undersea cables earlier this month and now this, I figured TM Net (my blessed ISP) should give a rebate or refund of this month’s bill to me. Yeah, dream on. As if they would be so gracious.

Mahler: Symphony No. 6

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For Windows Live Messenger users

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If you happen to receive this IM or email from the Messenger Service staff, please ignore it.

Important service announcement: As part of a recent system enhancement, we need you to change your e-mail address to continue signing in to the Windows Live(TM) Messenger Service.

To ensure that your access is not blocked and to learn more, go to http://support.microsoft.com/gp/Messenger/en

This link takes you to a Microsoft Support page containing details for changing your email address. It was accidentally sent out to Messenger users recently. Again, just ignore it and continue using WLM as normal. Somebody at Messenger Service made a cock-up and rest assured, we don’t have to change our email addresses.

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A solution for WLM’s Error 80070057?

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iMad recently sent me a comment detailing how he solved this frustrating problem. His comment is quoted below, verbatim:

I had the same problem, but there is a solution and it is simple.

When I tried to log in with the new Live messenger 9.0 beta, I get the error 80070057 and could not connect.

After searching the internet, could not find a solution, so I looked at the system logfiles and found a few errors.

event id: 215
wlcomm (3552) C:\Documents and Settings\%Username\\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\{5cfe6312-a70b-4456-a91f-088d46bb5268}\: Het maken van de back-up is gestopt, omdat deze door de client is gestopt of omdat de verbinding met de client is mislukt.

and event id: 458
wlcomm (3552) Een poging het bestand C:\Documents and Settings\%Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\{5cfe6312-a70b-4456-a91f-088d46bb5268}\DBStore\Backup\old\Folder Settings te maken is mislukt. Systeemfout 5 (0×00000005): Toegang geweigerd. . Tijdens het verwijderen van het bestand treedt fout -1032 (0xfffffbf8) op.

I opened the path in Explorer
C:\Documents and Settings\%Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts
And deleted allmost all the maps but not the %Username@msn.com map.
Then I restarted the Live messenger 9.0 beta and it worked again.

http://madshooter.spaces.live.com/blog/

Success

Thank you for the info, iMad. However, since I’m happy signing into WLM9 with my new Hotmail account, I won’t be trying it (yeah, call me chicken if you like). If you intend to try it, be extra careful when deleting files. I’d suggest making a backup first or just deleting them to the recycle bin. If this works for you, please post a comment here so that we know.

Oh, and one more reason why I’m happy with Hotmail is that I’ve heard they’re going to increase email storage space to a whopping 25GB from the existing 5GB. My local ISP gives me just a miserly 10MB, believe it or not!

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What’s up, WLM? Part 2

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Doris, bless her soul, has just informed me of a recent posting in Inside Windows Live Messenger, dated October 23, 2008. The author Brian says, and I quote,

“An issue has been discovered in the current Windows Live Messenger beta that may leave users unable to sign-in.  Only a very small number of users may encounter this issue but wanted to proactively message this to the community.

To avoid the issue yourself, please DO NOT block a group and then leave the group. If you plan to leave a group, please unblock it first. Following this precaution will ensure that you will not be affected by this issue.

We are currently working hard to fix the problem and allow those customers who have been affected to once again sign-in to the Messenger beta.

Thank you for your time and for participating in the beta!  We will post more information about this issue when it becomes available.”

Ah, at least a wee bit of information there. However, I haven’t blocked a group nor left a group when that annoying Error 80070057 sign-in message surfaced. In fact I’ve never created, or joined, or left, or blocked, a group at all, period. And nobody else in my household has done that sort of thing to my account (they’re not as geeky as me).

So I’m right where I started. If anybody has any other ideas, please comment or fill up my contact form.

P/S And what a laugh, if you look at the Releases in the right sidebar of the Inside Windows Live Messenger blog, there is NO mention of Windows Live Messenger 9.0 at all. Are these guys living in the present or the past?

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What’s up, WLM?

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I’d been using the latest version of Windows Live Messenger 9 (WLM) for the past few months. I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t give me any trouble at all although it was essentially still in Beta (the final release is due sometime early next year). However, at the start of this week, I found that I couldn’t sign in. The error code returned was 80070057; it mentioned that the email address I used to sign in was invalid, which was rubbish since I’ve been signing in with that address for as long as I’ve been doing instant messaging.

So being a Big Blue Ball staffer myself meant that I should be able to troubleshoot these pesky gremlins, correct? Signed in with my teenage kid’s hotmail account, and that was successful. Signed into Web Messenger with my own account, that turned out alright too. This meant that it probably didn’t have anything to do with my computer, it was in all likelihood a cock-up at the Microsoft server end. Just to give the big M a break, remember that their servers have to “serve” literally millions of WLM accounts, 24/7.

My good friend Doris to the rescue. She informed me that there were reports of this WLM outage being posted on the Net. Try as I might, I could find very little information concerning Error 80070057; of course I could have written to Messenger Support and told them about it. Nah, I’d probably just receive a generic reply. According to Doris, it could be due to the fact that they pushed out an update for WLM9, and that could have caused the hiccup.

What irks me is that the big M has remained generally quiet about this problem. That seems to be the way they’ve done it in the past, and usually it’s been left to other websites and forums to bring out these annoying issues. What can I say or do, after all the darn thing is free, right? Anyway, I got pretty fed up after not being able to sign in for four days. Bit the bullet, uninstalled WLM9 (sniff, I actually liked it), downloaded and installed version 8.5. Signing in was immediate.I’ll stick with 8.5 for another week or two, thank you very much.

The moral of the story is: don’t always jump the gun and believe that the fault is at your end (at least give it a 50-50 chance). I’ve heard horror stories of people reformatting and reinstalling Windows, just because of problems with WLM. It gets even more nerve-wrecking and frustrating to discover that the problem is still there after doing all these drastic measures. So what can you do? Join Big Blue Ball! It’s where you can find answers, suggestions, etc. for 99.9% of your IM problems. The staff (including myself, ahem) are helpful and friendly, there’s lots to see and do besides the IM stuff. And did I mention, registering is free, of course. Kudos to Jeff Hester, Mr. Big Blue Ball himself, for starting the BBB forums many years ago.

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The great things about the Internet

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I was just thinking of this while folding my clothes Hee hee. Here are a couple of things I came up with:

  1. Help and advice are readily available, provided you look for it. And most of the time, people don’t even think about charging you.
  2. A sense of belonging. This is especially true in a great forum such as BigBlueBall, where I’ve met lots of nice folks. Furthermore, with Instant Messaging such as Windows Live Messenger, you’re never alone.
  3. International brotherhood. Yeah, I just coined this up. Tied in with #1, because while you can search for help and advice, you can also contribute ideas and solutions. It’s an international win-win situation.
  4. Opportunities. Granted, there are thousands of scams on the web, but there are also genuine opportunities. This is something I am really looking into!

Any thoughts? Please drop a comment here (no moderation or approval in my blog, your comment will appear immediately).

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