Bit of a weird one this... I've been using WLM since launch, and yesterday it crashed on me, and I had to end the msnmsgr.exe process from task manager.

Since then, I've not been able to hide the menu bar at the top of my main contact list or in any of my conversation windows - The button to get rid of them just isn't there!

HOW IT SHOULD LOOK


HOW IT ACTUALLY LOOKS


I've removed Messenger Plus just in case, done a repair on WLM (that didn't work), and tried removing WLM completely and reinstalling after a reboot, but still no luck.

Don't know whether it's relevent or not, but Windows Media Player still lets me remove the menu bar, so I guess it's a Messenger thing rather than a Windows thing.

Anybody got any ideas?

When uninstalling and rebooting, did you also delete the MSN Messenger folder from C:\Program Files\?. If not, then uninstall both Messenger Plus! Live and Windows Live Messenger again. Delete both of their folders from C:\Program Files\ and then reboot. Then re-download them both and reinstall them fresh.

Yes, I thought about that, but the uninstall process does actually remove the program folder.

Thanks for the idea though.

Any ideas on this? I am having the exact same problem

I have found a (quite destructive) way of fixing this up

Yesterday, I arrived at home and found my mother printing something at my computer (in which i had THE problem). She was about to log off her user when a WLM window popped up. ¡¡A NORMAL WLM WINDOW!! ¡¡WITHOUT THAT DAMNED FRAME!!

I have always suspected this had to do with configurations, but never found any relevant config anywhere (and I even sweeped through the register searching for "messenger" and "msnmsgr"), but, after cruising half the register (including the full HKCU hive for both my and her accounts), and since this was bugging me quite a lot, I took the clean way: ¿does WLM have anything wrong about my windows user account that it does not have about my mum's? Then... KILL MY WINDOWS USER AND CREATE ONE ANEW!!

Of course, I backed up some configs that I DID want to keep (Outlook Express identities, MY DOCS, Firefox bookmarks...) and DECRYPTED ALL THE NTFS-ENCRYPTED FILES (those are tied to your user accout, kill it and you can't access them anymore). And then... I did it. I went into safe mode (both to log in as Admin and to force all my win user account files closed), killed my account, moved the now dead folder at 'C:\Documents and Settings\ACCOUNTNAME'  out of place (instead of deleting it, did I say "backup 'my docs'?" It's faster just to move it from the old folder) and created a new user...

Remember that you'll have to go through a permission nightmare if you have something like "protected" files belonging to your former user account: each user is identified NOT by its name, but by its ID#, which is now different (you might see something the likes of S-1-11654-0401876... if you look at the permissions of any file held by your former account: its ID no longer matches any on the system user table and cannot be assigned a name). I just took posession of everything (hehe) I had in my old account and set some basic permissions.

Oh, by the way... it worked

How desperate do you have to be to do all that?

If what traxor posted doesn't work, then try upgrading to the latest version of WLM, 8.0.0812.

QUITE desperate, you bet... it was kinda distressing me, especially since WLM "window" doesn't fit right into windoze's frame, and I just couln't stop staring at the transparent voids at the frame corners...