Latest Messenger broken ??

[Stephen Howe]

Hi

I am competent programmer
Have a situation where the teenage daughter of a friend is desperate.
Seems that her whole life revolves around Messenger.

They have Windows XP Home edition (I think all SP'ed up), she downloaded the
latest Messenger, installed it and it seems it is broken. She then attempted
to reinstall the last version of Messenger and that does not work either. I
have yet to go round and look at the PC, so I cannot tell you about
versions, nor whether it was installed correctly (or uninstalled correctly
or not).

<later>

Having talked by phone and this 2nd hand info, I think it is version 7.5 and
it sounds to me that the XP Firewall is blocking Messenger. That is
interesting. I would have thought the Messenger installer would know about
this and got things right. Sounds to me like configuring the Firewall for
the right port for Messenger is what I should be doing.

Does this ring any bells?

Stephen

[Gary Tsang]

Which Messenger are you trying to get?

Latest version of MSN Messenger can be found here
http://messenger.msn.com

Latest version of Windows Messenger can be found here
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a8d9eb73-5f8c-4b9a-940f-9157a3b3d774&DisplayLang=en

When the firewall prompt comes up, you should hit the Unblock button to
allow an exception to be created for either one of the Messenger clients

--
Gary Tsang
Microsoft MVP - Windows XP Shell/User
http://www.microsoft.com/mvp


"Stephen Howe" <stephenPOINThoweATtns-globalPOINTcom> wrote in message
...
> Hi
>
> I am competent programmer
> Have a situation where the teenage daughter of a friend is desperate.
> Seems that her whole life revolves around Messenger.
>
> They have Windows XP Home edition (I think all SP'ed up), she downloaded
> the
> latest Messenger, installed it and it seems it is broken. She then
> attempted
> to reinstall the last version of Messenger and that does not work either.
> I
> have yet to go round and look at the PC, so I cannot tell you about
> versions, nor whether it was installed correctly (or uninstalled correctly
> or not).
>
> <later>
>
> Having talked by phone and this 2nd hand info, I think it is version 7.5
> and
> it sounds to me that the XP Firewall is blocking Messenger. That is
> interesting. I would have thought the Messenger installer would know about
> this and got things right. Sounds to me like configuring the Firewall for
> the right port for Messenger is what I should be doing.
>
> Does this ring any bells?
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
>

[Stephen Howe]

Thanks.

Latest chat with my friend reveals that the Firewall is okay.
It just won't sign in. Says "Unable to sign you up".

Seems Messenger 7.5 is broken

Stephen Howe

[Jonathan Kay [MVP]]

Greetings Stephen,

The XP Firewall can't block Messenger as it can only block incoming connections; not outgoing
as Messenger uses to connect.

Regardless, what's required is port 80 or 1863 and 443 TCP.
____________________________________________
Jonathan Kay
Microsoft MVP - Windows Messenger/MSN Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2005 Jonathan Kay.
You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.

"Stephen Howe" <stephenPOINThoweATtns-globalPOINTcom> wrote in message
...
> Hi
>
> I am competent programmer
> Have a situation where the teenage daughter of a friend is desperate.
> Seems that her whole life revolves around Messenger.
>
> They have Windows XP Home edition (I think all SP'ed up), she downloaded the
> latest Messenger, installed it and it seems it is broken. She then attempted
> to reinstall the last version of Messenger and that does not work either. I
> have yet to go round and look at the PC, so I cannot tell you about
> versions, nor whether it was installed correctly (or uninstalled correctly
> or not).
>
> <later>
>
> Having talked by phone and this 2nd hand info, I think it is version 7.5 and
> it sounds to me that the XP Firewall is blocking Messenger. That is
> interesting. I would have thought the Messenger installer would know about
> this and got things right. Sounds to me like configuring the Firewall for
> the right port for Messenger is what I should be doing.
>
> Does this ring any bells?
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
>

[AMB]

I am having the same issue with my MSN messenger 7.5 it began with 7.0 I had
uninstalled 7.0 and tried to fix that by installing 7.5, no such luck.
I have drilled into all the possible solutions in other posts here, cleaned
out cache and internet explorer files, ran all the cmds listed in another
response also, deleted the file also...I tried adding exceptions I tried
adding ports as you suggested...the only thing that seems to work is
disabling Norton Firewall. Which is not really what I want to do long term. I
cannot find any thing on Norton, Dell, or Microsoft support sites to add to
what was already suggested there or here. I have minimum A+ and networking
experience which I really haven't used for nearly 2 years. So I am not the
most gifted here...but capable of finding my way through.

Running WIN XP.

Would appreciate any further assistance.
Thanks!!
Ally

"Jonathan Kay [MVP]" wrote:

> Greetings Stephen,
>
> The XP Firewall can't block Messenger as it can only block incoming connections; not outgoing
> as Messenger uses to connect.
>
> Regardless, what's required is port 80 or 1863 and 443 TCP.
> ____________________________________________
> Jonathan Kay
> Microsoft MVP - Windows Messenger/MSN Messenger
> Associate Expert
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
> Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
> All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2005 Jonathan Kay.
> You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.
>
> "Stephen Howe" <stephenPOINThoweATtns-globalPOINTcom> wrote in message
> ...
> > Hi
> >
> > I am competent programmer
> > Have a situation where the teenage daughter of a friend is desperate.
> > Seems that her whole life revolves around Messenger.
> >
> > They have Windows XP Home edition (I think all SP'ed up), she downloaded the
> > latest Messenger, installed it and it seems it is broken. She then attempted
> > to reinstall the last version of Messenger and that does not work either. I
> > have yet to go round and look at the PC, so I cannot tell you about
> > versions, nor whether it was installed correctly (or uninstalled correctly
> > or not).
> >
> > <later>
> >
> > Having talked by phone and this 2nd hand info, I think it is version 7.5 and
> > it sounds to me that the XP Firewall is blocking Messenger. That is
> > interesting. I would have thought the Messenger installer would know about
> > this and got things right. Sounds to me like configuring the Firewall for
> > the right port for Messenger is what I should be doing.
> >
> > Does this ring any bells?
> >
> > Stephen
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>

[Stephen Howe]

> Greetings Stephen,
>
> The XP Firewall can't block Messenger as it can only block incoming
connections; not outgoing
> as Messenger uses to connect.
>
> Regardless, what's required is port 80 or 1863 and 443 TCP.

Okay I got to the bottom of this after goig round Saturday and examining the
PC.

They are using Kaspersky for anti-virus and anti-hacker (so firewall).
I found in Kaspersky firewall, that iun its permitted software, it had 2
versions of Messenger registered, one of which was greyed out. I suspect
that the greyed out version was the previous version of Messenger, no longer
installed and the non-greyed out version was for Messenger 7.5. So I think
Kaspersky was confused.

As soon as I deleted the greyed out entry, everything worked.

Stephen Howe