Windows Live Messenger Content Retriever (ConCon Retriever) is a portable software program for the Windows operating system that is compatible with Windows Live Messenger 8.1, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 but also the beta of Windows Live Messenger 9.

The software program displays the registered Windows Live users of a computer system and the different types of contents in a list. The file list is displayed next to that initial display containing all the files that are available to the selected Windows Live Messenger user.

A preview image of the content is displayed in the same interface as well. It is possible to open the content in the default viewer of the computer system or select a different application from a list of installed software programs.

A click on Backup will backup all selected contents of a user account with the option to restore the contents at a later time.

The settings can be used to access the contents of a different Microsoft Messenger installation on the computer system. Windows Live Messenger Content Retriever is an interesting backup utility for users who like to save their Windows Live Messenger multimedia files.

It can be quite frustrating to discover the root of the problem especially when the user wants a clean uninstall to install a newer version of the product again. Keith over at Techie Buzz discovered the Zap Messenger application which can completely uninstall MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Messenger from a computer system.

It solves all kind of problems that prevent the uninstallation of those products and is not limited to the ones mentioned in the first paragraph. Zap Messenger is a portable application that does require the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0.

The author is not listing the operating systems the software program is compatible with but it seems that it should run fine on Windows XP and Windows Vista.

aMSN is an open-source intant messaging client available for Linux, OS X, FreeBSD and Windows (if you dislike the proprietary client) which supports many features specifically on the MSN network which Adium and Pidgin do not.

The client can handle most features which WLM can, excluding MSN Zone Games. aMSN is much more customisable than Windows Live Messenger too, with dozens of plugins and skins being available.

aMSN lacks the ability to connect to networks besides MSN but if you are in Adium and Pidgin and a situation arises when you may want to use a webcam, aMSN does not take long to load and it is much quicker than booting into Windows.

Update 19th October: aMSN does not yet support audio conversations

It would be possible to use two different clients, for example MSN Messenger and Meebo to connect with two different user IDs but that would mean to cope with two different applications. A more straightforward way is offered by the MSN Messenger tool Polygamy (via Technobuzz) which patches MSN Messenger so that it can be run in multiple instances.

The software is able to patch various versions of MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger including the latest official releases and several beta versions of the Instant Messenger clients.

The MSN Messenger patch comes basically with two switches, one for enabling multiple logins and one to disable the feature again. All the user needs to do is to make the selection and click on the Patch button to patch the file.

One of the reasons why I never bothered to use Instant Messengers was the “spammy” connotation of them. There have been many services on the Internet that offered add-ons, smileys and other gimmicks for Instant Messengers that turned out to infect the user’s computer with malicious software or use the information entered by the user to spam him into oblivion.

HiYo seems to be different. The add-on for MSN Messenger comes without adware, spyware and other malicious software. It adds a new toolbar to the compose window that provides access to new content that can be added to posts like images and animations.

• HiYo is loaded with tons of free animated Emoticons
• Send the most hilarious Audibles to your friends on MSN Messenger
• Find any Emoticon, Wink, Animation, Sound Effect, Audible or Nudge easily
• Send HiYo’s crazy Winks to move and shake your buddy’s conversation window
• Replace your old Display Pictures with cool animated slideshows

One interesting aspect is that content gets suggested by HiYo which is great for the flow of conversation because it does not usually take ages to find the right image for the current situation.

An article about MSN Messenger blocking links to sites like Youtube.com and probably several others. The user sending the link would receive the message “The following message could not be delivered to all recipients”. The outcry was heard loud and wide with stories appearing on Slashdot, Digg and probably a million other websites who were simply reiterating what one blog started.

The Internet loves conspiracy theories and some sites especially when they can fight against the root of all evil Microsoft. What I want to say is that no one but Microsoft (hopefully) knows the reason why those links have not been send to the recipient. It could be that they decided to filter some urls that belong to their competition, it could be a glitch, an error after server upgrades or a improperly configured spam filter.

The issue seems to have been fixed and everything returned back to normal. I have no means of testing if this is really true but from the multitude of comments on those popular news aggregator websites it seems that it is.

I’m still posting the workaround in case they are still blocked for some users. Stripping the url of the http:// prefix is all that needs to be done to be able to send the link.

I do not mean to be saying that webmasters should not report about the issue until they know what is going on but if they get hold of such a story they should not draw conclusions so easily.

Update: An Microsoft representative posted an article that explains what happened.

MSN E-Fix can be run from any location and it actually comes in four different language versions which is surely an improvement over the other program that I reviewed some days ago which was only available in Italian. It was not hard to use though but I still prefer a program in a language that I understand to avoid errors. The supported languages are English, Italian, French and Spanish with Dutch scheduled to be included in one of the future releases.

Once started the program displays a list of error codes on the left side that can be checked and a Go button that should be pressed once all errors that should be fixed have been checked. The author send me a message where he compares his software to MSN Repair. I have no way of checking those claims because as you might know I do not use an Instant Messenger which is one reason why I will not publish them here.

Anyone with MSN Messenger and some errors who would try them out is welcome to let me know about the results though.

Still, MSN Repair 2 (Italian) fixes problems and common errors in Windows Live Messenger and MSN Messenger. Valention kept the user interface simply which is really the best design for repair applications in my opinion. First, there is the button repair which repairs Registry settings, program libraries and files that have been altered since installation of MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger.

The second option is to correct specific errors by clicking on the Select Errors link in the program window. In total 13 common errors can be selected from the list which will then be repaired by MSN Repair 2.

Here is the list of errors that are fixed:

• Error 81000314
• Error 800b0001
• Error 81000370
• Error 80040111
• Error 800401f3
• Error 80048820
• Error 80048883
• Error 80072ee6
• Error 80072efd
• Unable to send / receive sounds (Plus)
• Incorporates Windows Messenger (version already installed on Windows)
• Not accessed but not by errors
• Unable to add contacts