Shoutbox

Hi

THis question relates to the following directory and folders within a windows 7 environment-

Users/[PCNAME]/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Messenger

Under this folder i have a folder with my own email address which i naturally use for hotmail and Messenger-

Users/[PCUSER]/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Messenger/xyz@hotmail.com


Under my hotmail folder there are the usual folders- object store and Social News etc.

There are two other folders for other users.

Users/[PCUSER]/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Messenger/abc@hotmail.com

and
Users/[PCUSER]/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Messenger/abc@def.com


Both of those folders have a single folder - object store- and both of those folders have Winks3 which contain emoticons

Note, 'xyz', 'abc' and 'def' are substitutes for the real user id's and mail domain.

I assume another user has used my PC to log into messenger.  My question is this, is there any other way that those two other folders could have been created other than by logging into messenger on my PC?

Thanks in advance

Chum1

It may be possible those folders where created to store a local copy of the winks/custom emoticons. This saves the server having to resend the images.

I believe if they had have logged in on your PC, the other folders would be created too (social news etc)

Thanks Spunky, i hope that's it.  It does make sense.

Hi Spunky

I just had another thought. What if they logged in without ticking remember my name, remember my password etc. perhaps those other folders wouldn't be created.

I'm going to try it later, i can't now, but you seem to know a bit about it so i thought i'd write it here and get your thoughts.

Chum

I would still imagine it would have to create folder for their personal settings.

I can't remember off the top of my head where, but information about users that have signed in gets saved to the registry too.

quote:

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Originally posted by Chum1
I assume another user has used my PC to log into messenger.  My question is this, is there any other way that those two other folders could have been created other than by logging into messenger on my PC?

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Not that I know of...
Those folders are only created when you log in into Messenger.

quote:

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Originally posted by Spunky
It may be possible those folders where created to store a local copy of the winks/custom emoticons. This saves the server having to resend the images.

---

correct, but:

quote:

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Originally posted by Spunky
I believe if they had have logged in on your PC, the other folders would be created too (social news etc)

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Not necessarily. It depends on what you did on Messenger and how you configured it. Eg: if you never use winks or get winks, that 'Winks3' subfolder wont be created. The same goes for almost every other folder.
So, yep, those are mainly folders to store cache. But if there is nothing to store, nothing will be created upfront.

quote:

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Originally posted by Spunky
I can't remember off the top of my head where, but information about users that have signed in gets saved to the registry too.

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HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSNMessenger\PerPassportSettings
is one example...

Under that registry path there are subkeys which are the so called MSN IDs of the accounts which have logged in (at least attempted to log in) into Messenger.