Portable Messenger Plus Anyone?

Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? - Printable Version

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+--- Forum: Messenger Plus! for Live Messenger (/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+---- Forum: WLM Plus! General (/forumdisplay.php?fid=23)
+----- Thread: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? (/showthread.php?tid=72199)

Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Ehtyar on 02-28-2007 at 11:07 PM

Hi all.
I have been working on a portable version of msn 7.5 today, and I'd like to include Messenger Plus with it. I have moved the registry keys with Messenger Plus, and they are changed each time the program is run to match the current drive/folder its in. This prevents the "not installed" error, but plus does not seem to hook correctly anymore. I get the option to fix and restart messenger, or permanantly fix the problem before next reboot. I would appreciate any info or input on this project from any members of the forum, if this is allowed. If anyone has a problem with me making a portable version of Messenger Plus, please say so and i will discontinue my efforts, but if not, please feel free to suggest anything that might help.

Thanks very much, Ehtyar.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Thor on 02-28-2007 at 11:57 PM

Well, I am not sure if Patchou wants this, I hope he can answer.

But what I do know, is that that would be a really nice thing. (Y)

Good luck with the project anyway!.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by prashker on 02-28-2007 at 11:58 PM

Probably not since most of the settings are in the registry.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Ehtyar on 03-01-2007 at 01:38 AM

The settings are not a problem, they have been transfered no problem. I will probably need a developers help for this, considering the problem appears to lie in the hooking procedures. Once again, any help is appreciated, and thanks for the nice comments Nitro

Ehtyar.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Supersonicdarky on 03-01-2007 at 01:39 AM

miranda portable > *

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Patchou on 03-01-2007 at 01:48 AM

what exactly do you mean by "portable" ? what's the hardware you're using and with what Windows? thanks

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Eddie on 03-01-2007 at 02:38 AM

I think it would be cool to have a Messenger Plus Portable And Patchoui think they mean put it into a USB and use it with Portable MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger)

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by MeEtc on 03-01-2007 at 02:50 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Patchou
what exactly do you mean by "portable" ? what's the hardware you're using and with what Windows? thanks

a portable application is something you can put on a memory stick or whatever and be able to run the program from any computer, keeping all of the settings and files for the program necessary to run within one folder.

there's some example applications at http://www.portableapps.com/ I use the portable firefox while I'm at school, to keep my addons, cookies, favourites and whatnot from disappearing every time I log on.

Ehtyar is looking to make such an app out of MsgPlus 3.43 by the looks of it. (alongside MSN 7.5)

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Ehtyar on 03-01-2007 at 02:52 AM

Indeed Shadow I'm surprised I'm getting such a positive response to all this. Patchou, the problem is not that msgplus does not function properly on my platform (but just in case, I'm running on a windows xp pro sp2 virtual machine (vmware)) because it runs when i use it before moving the files to a blank vm, but that it seems when i move msg plus from one machine to a clean one, it's either missing something, or something is mis configured, and it no longer functions. This is despite all the files and registry keys i can find being brought along with it.

Hope this helps, Ehtyar.

[edit]
MeEtc got it right.
[/edit]

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Patchou on 03-01-2007 at 05:21 AM

oh! ok, I didn't understand what you meant. I'll see what I can do about this. Currently, Messenger Plus! just needs the proper entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE to find its files, I guess I could check a ini file (however, for the settings that are supposed to go in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, I couldn't do much so your prefs would evaporate if HKCU is erased).

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Ehtyar on 03-01-2007 at 05:33 AM

I have already taken care of the registry keys, it's part of the portable launcher. The problem is that when i execute MsgPlus on a system that it wasn't originally installed on, the hooks don't work, and msn launches without MsgPlus. I get the dialog asking if i want to repaid it. I need to know what's causing this, near as i can tell it's nothing to do with the registry keys. A list of everything MsgPlus does to the system would be really helpful also, if it isn't a problem to provide.

Thanks again, Ehtyar.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Patchou on 03-01-2007 at 07:46 PM

well, for once, if I do an update and check this out, if will be for Messenger Plus! Live and Windows Live Messenger.

Messenger Plus! 3 does some global hooking and that may be your very problem. You should have much less difficulties with the latest version if you give it a try (at least, I suppose so).

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Oxy on 03-01-2007 at 07:59 PM

this dose sound like a good idea.. then we can have it at school!

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Ehtyar on 03-01-2007 at 08:09 PM

Unfortunately Patchou it is literally impossible to make msn 8 portable, simple as that, since it cannot be installed on a machine with limited priviges, it cannot be entirely moved to one either. Basically all i require is either a list of things i need to consider when moving MsgPlus from one machine to the next, or a list of operations that the installer performs, most of which i believe i am aware of as i ran the installer under process monitor. A portable version of msn 7.5 is already completed, i just thought it would be nice to add MsgPlus, for hiding the icon etc etc. As always, any help is appreciated.

Thanks, Ehtyar.

[edit]
Also, now that i think about it, it would also be helpful to know of a way to close MsgPlus using SendMessage etc as opposed to terminating the process.
[/edit]

[edit2]
A friend of mine has found a copy of wlm portable. It is packed into a single executable with thinstall, and unpacking it is beyond my abilities. I'd like to keep working on the portable version 7, as the wlm version doesn't save your settings. If anyone would like a copy of the wlm version, it can be found here. Also unfortunately, it cannot have msnplus added to it, unless someone manages to unpack it. So still any help on adding msnplus to portable msn 7.5 is greatly appreciated.
[/edit2]

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by stu on 03-27-2007 at 07:38 PM

I have been looking for a portable Plus for a while, I think it would be a great idea, and very useful to many people.
Ehtyar, are you still working on it, or are you planning to distribute your work?

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Ehtyar on 03-29-2007 at 07:43 AM

Hey stu.
I had pretty much given up on this thread, seeing as no one seems particularly interested in helping me figure out what I'm missing. Should i accomplish my goal, The source for the loader (NSIS) and the applications would be released, of course. However, I am not capable of figuring this out on my own.
If you know anyone interested, please direct them to this thread and I will be more than happy to get back to work on this.

Thanks, Ehtyar.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by L. Coyote on 03-30-2007 at 01:28 AM

The idea of an official portable Plus! Live is very good, actually. Especially in countries such as mine, where most Internet users still connect from Internet cafes. (Y)

RE: RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Novastar827 on 04-01-2007 at 10:58 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Ehtyar
Unfortunately Patchou it is literally impossible to make msn 8 portable, simple as that, since it cannot be installed on a machine with limited priviges, it cannot be entirely moved to one either. Basically all i require is either a list of things i need to consider when moving MsgPlus from one machine to the next, or a list of operations that the installer performs, most of which i believe i am aware of as i ran the installer under process monitor. A portable version of msn 7.5 is already completed, i just thought it would be nice to add MsgPlus, for hiding the icon etc etc. As always, any help is appreciated.

Thanks, Ehtyar.

[edit]
Also, now that i think about it, it would also be helpful to know of a way to close MsgPlus using SendMessage etc as opposed to terminating the process.
[/edit]

[edit2]
A friend of mine has found a copy of wlm portable. It is packed into a single executable with thinstall, and unpacking it is beyond my abilities. I'd like to keep working on the portable version 7, as the wlm version doesn't save your settings. If anyone would like a copy of the wlm version, it can be found here. Also unfortunately, it cannot have MsgPlus added to it, unless someone manages to unpack it. So still any help on adding MsgPlus to portable msn 7.5 is greatly appreciated.
[/edit2]

If you mean the wlm portable from the site you linked to, btw that link is wrong, there wouldn't be much point in unpacking it, there's nothing in there that you can't find already, and if you have thinstall, then you can recreate it yourself, and yes, wlm lite does save your settings, the newest version makes your settings portable, and an unreleased version completely sandboxes everything in a much more orderly manner.

If you're making a portable msn or wlm, it's advised you use thinstall yourself, otherwise you can't have a portable flash and ink, which require installation. If you're having trouble making wlm portable, the reason is wlm requires the vc++ 2005 runtimes, and because they're sxs dlls, they have to be installed on the system, the only way around this is to find or compile your own which don't require loading through a manifest, and can be loaded just be placing them in the program folder, and then you have to open up all the messenger dll/exes, and tear out all the references in the manifests, and that should do it, but again you won't have flash and ink support without thinstall, there is no workaround for those.

As for adding plus support, it's relatively easy with plus 3, simply inject msgplusloader.dll into the messenger process, no need for the exe loader and the system wide hooks, and as for registry entries it just needs the basics on where the plus files are located. However getting plus live to work in thinstall is still a work in progress.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Ehtyar on 04-02-2007 at 02:30 AM

Indeed the link is wrong, thanks for that. However...
WLM Lite does *NOT* save settings: "does not modify the registry, with the exception of storing your msn settings in hkey_current_user".
An unreleased copy does not do me much good, considering it is *unreleased* and unless it *does* save your settings it still does not accomplish what i would like it to.
I am aware of the manifest based dependencies, which is why msn live cannot be made portable without thinstall, which again does not save settings.
Though thank you for suggesting the dll injection, that will help me out quite a bit if i can find a way to manage it on a limited account with dep activated.

Thanks, Ehtyar.

P.S. This is contingent on the latest version of WLMLite being from msgshit.com dated 06-10-07.

RE: RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Novastar827 on 04-02-2007 at 03:26 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Ehtyar
Indeed the link is wrong, thanks for that. However...
WLM Lite does *NOT* save settings: "does not modify the registry, with the exception of storing your msn settings in hkey_current_user".
An unreleased copy does not do me much good, considering it is *unreleased* and unless it *does* save your settings it still does not accomplish what i would like it to.
I am aware of the manifest based dependencies, which is why msn live cannot be made portable without thinstall, which again does not save settings.
Though thank you for suggesting the dll injection, that will help me out quite a bit if i can find a way to manage it on a limited account with dep activated.

Thanks, Ehtyar.

P.S. This is contingent on the latest version of WLMLite being from msgshit.com dated 06-10-07.

yes, I know, and it says just as I wrote it, and you quoted "with the exception of storing your msn settings ", hence it saves your msn settings, in the last release, it imports and exports HKCU to a file in the current directory that WLM is located, the key it works with is Software\WLMLite, so it doesn't conflict with the system installed version, therefore making it portable, and any temp files that are exchanged when you login and created custom emoticons, and background are placed in a temp directory where wlmlite is running, hrm, I see, it was never formally updated, if you check the msgshit forums you'll find a post by me with the link, it's version 5, that's the version I'm talking about, I'm guessing they never updated it as they were waiting for version 6, which was to have the more organized sandboxing and of course plus support. I acheived the former, but plus support is still a big problem, I'm hoping patchou can help solve that mystery. If you want the unreleased version let me know, it just doesn't have plus support, it sandboxes everything including registry changes and file changes, and it doesn't ever touch the physical registry, a much better design, but I was holding out for plus support, that's frustrated me to no end.

>>I am aware of the manifest based dependencies, which is why msn live cannot be made portable without thinstall, which again does not save settings.

that's incorrect, it can, you just need a copy of visual studio 2005, and compile your own vc++ runtimes without the check for manifest loading, which is by default, and then remove the entries in the manifest for the runtimes, and place the ones you compiled in the directory, if you need any help just ask, I have them if you need them, you can use them for any program which has this requirement to make it portable, providing you remove the manifest entries, no thinstall required for this

I'm not sure why you think thinstall prohibits saving settings, it doesn't, in thinstall embedded all settings are saved normally to the host system, but you can redirect them using environment variables, and a new feature called symbolic linking, where you can map calls for a directory to another directory (that's used in version 5, link in msgshit board), and thinstall VS (the unreleased version I mentioned uses just this) sandboxes all changes to a subdirectory where the exe is located, making it portable even easier.

>>Though thank you for suggesting the dll injection, that will help me out quite a bit if i can find a way to manage it on a limited account with dep activated.

a limited account shouldn't affect your ability to inject the dll, it's pretty much all msgplus.exe did, it looks for the creation of the messenger process, finds the window, and then injects the loader dll, you're just taking the monitoring process out of the picture, there are several dll injectors out there, take your pick.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Ehtyar on 11-05-2007 at 11:47 AM

Hi again all.
I've had thinstalled msn 8 for a while now, and I've decided to try Messenger Plus portable again. I have added Messenger Plus to the thinstall environment but i get the "software not loaded" menu item. I hate to say it but this really is monumentally unhelpful. Is there any error log i can look at, or does anyone have any suggestions as to what might be preventing Messenger Plus from loading under thinstall (a dll injection issue perhaps, given that msn is now all in one executable?)?. Any help anyone can offer me would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Ehtyar.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Volv on 11-05-2007 at 01:01 PM

I believe that MsgPlus Live modifies msimg32.dll in your Windows Live Messenger directory, or does something regarding that particular DLL (I'm not so good at this whole hooking thing ). This could be your problem as everything is compressed into a single executable.

You should probably wait for someone with more experience in the field though.

RE: RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Ehtyar on 11-05-2007 at 07:52 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Volv
I believe that MsgPlus Live modifies msimg32.dll in your Windows Live Messenger directory, or does something regarding that particular DLL (I'm not so good at this whole hooking thing ). This could be your problem as everything is compressed into a single executable.

You should probably wait for someone with more experience in the field though.

Indeed you are correct, msimg32.dll is the msgplus loader. While this is helpful information it does not help me with my problem. Thank you for your help Volv. Any more information is appreciated.

Thanks, Ehtyar.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Patchou on 11-05-2007 at 08:24 PM

can you tell me more about what you're using for this and what you're doing exactly? I'll work on that and check if I can make it work for the next version.

Please email me at mplus-support@patchou.com . Thanks .

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Mike on 11-05-2007 at 09:36 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Patchou
can you tell me more about what you're using for this and what you're doing exactly? I'll work on that and check if I can make it work for the next version.

There is a program called Thinstall that takes a snapshot of your system before and after the installation of a program, and then it finds the differences between the two snapshots and creates a file that has all the new files in it and all the new registry entries. This allows you to take that file to any computer (school, internet cafe, etc) and run that program from that file. All the changes the program makes to its files/registry keys will be updated in that big file. At least that's how I think it works since I haven't really used it...
What Ehtyar probably wants to do is to Thinstall WLM and MP!L so that he can take it to his work/school/whatever, but he is having problems with MP!L.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Ehtyar on 11-06-2007 at 12:45 AM

Exactly right. Thus far i haven't come across something that doesn't work in thinstall. I'm currently using thinstalled photoshop and thinstalled ms office 07, which might give you some idea of the power of this thing. I'm fairly confident i can solve this problem on my own given some idea of what is causing the load failure, but of course i'm more than open to some help. If there is a debug build that might perhaps give me some error information, or some description of how mpl integrates with messenger, that would be a big help.

Thanks, Ehtyar.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by bramvandeperre on 12-09-2007 at 05:38 AM

http://www.msglite.org/

ok.. WLM 8.5 is portable.. now plus! live 4.50?

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Aardvark on 12-09-2007 at 07:07 AM

While I haven't tried this myself, partially due to the fact I can't get a Thinstalled messenger working in the first place, wouldn't it work if you took the snapshot of before WLM was installed, and then install WLM AND Plus!, and then packaged it all together? Because then theoretically you have all the correct files in place... It's probably a bit more complicated than that but hey sometimes the simplest solution might be the best one.

RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by bramvandeperre on 12-09-2007 at 07:24 AM

aardvark, nee, want er zijn nog extra dingen die je nodig hebt voor winks enzo en die zitten dus al in WLM lite in..

eardpig, no, because there are other things you'll need to display winks etc, and they are included in WLM lite..

RE: RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Novastar827 on 12-09-2007 at 05:19 PM

quote:
Originally posted by vandeperreh
http://www.msglite.org/

ok.. WLM 8.5 is portable.. now plus! live 4.50?

unfortunately, plus 4.50 is no more compatible with thinstall then the previous versions, which isn't really a suprise, disabling the safety checks doesn't even get you the plus menu, but I already knew that when patchou suggested it months ago, finding the exact cause for why it doesn't work has been pretty difficult, although I suppose it's safe to say that it's a conflict between detours and thinstall, since both use similar methods of rerouting, and modifying api calls, it might help if there was a method of loading plus into the process in a less complex, more direct alternative form, to at least eliminate the loader as an issue, although there's no guarantee that it would get you any further

RE: RE: Portable Messenger Plus Anyone? by Aardvark on 12-10-2007 at 01:57 AM

quote:
Originally posted by vandeperreh
because there are other things you'll need to display winks etc, and they are included in WLM lite..

I was talking about a basic gist of making it working. Lets not get picky now