Windows Live Messenger IE7 crash - the answer?

[Rogerdgford]

I think I have finally solved the problem of the IE7 Windows Live Messenger crash :)

The crash occurs when Messenger cannot contact the server for the advertisements which appear in the bottom panel.

Enabling certain ad blocking software will cause this crash. For example, Live Messenger crashes if the Common Ad Sites Shield in Spysweeper is enabled, but it will run with Ad Muncher.

However, the situation is not quite as simple as this, since, after my first installation of Internet Explorer 7 and Live Messenger, the crash occurred even when I disabled Spysweeper. I believe therefore, that, if Spysweeper or some other scanning software is running when IE7 and/or Live Messenger are installed, it may cause a faulty setup which prevents access to the advert server.

There is yet another curiosity. At least one person reports that he was able to run Live Messenger and IE7 on his laptop when it was connected at work, but not on his home connection. I think the explanation for this may possibly be that the faulty setup only prevents Live Messenger from accessing the advert server when incoming communications on port 80 are blocked by one's ISP, as is sometimes the case with domestic adsl services.

To rectify my setup, I took the following steps, although I cannot say for sure which actually solved the problem:

1. I uninstalled Live Messenger and Internet Explorer 7, and I also uninstalled Skype, since even with my original setup, Live Messenger worked with IE7 when Skype was also running, which seemed very odd.

2. I uninstalled Spysweeper, and my firewall (Zone Alarm), and my antivirus software (Nod32), restarting the computer as necessary.

3. I then ran Crap Cleaner both to clean all relevant files and also to rectify all registry errors, and restarted the computer.

4. I re-installed Internet Explorer 7, and restarted the computer.

5. I re-installed Windows Live Messenger, and it worked :D

6. I then re-installed Nod32, Zone Alarm and Spysweeper, and Live Messenger still worked :rofl:

7. I then got back to all the things I needed to do on the computer before this problem started in the first place!!! :yes:

I hope this helps!!