Shoutbox

Hello, I'm here begging for any help you can give me with the following problem.

A friend of mine two days ago was working fine with her WLM 8.5 then she went to take a nap and during that time her internet connection dropped off and when she returned and went online again, all her emoticons vanished, only the ones that come with WLM remained.

But that's not all no, all the rest of the content namely winks, backgrounds, dynamic backgrounds and display pictures vanished too, on the Change display image window the option saying Don't show a picture is clicked but also is grayed out.

We used the remote assitance so I could help her but nothing worked, I tried everything, uninstalling, cleaning the registry of the msn entries, deleting folders related to it, even system restore and nothing, the things are the same.

The content is there on the computer, I took the chance and used a backup utility to backup all her custom content but without solving the main issue I can't restore anything because even if I try to add a emoticon, background or display image I get the Not valid image format error.

So if you know how to solve this please tell me that I'm so desperate now

thanks in advance

Are you sure Windows Live Messenger restarted after the drop and not Windows Messenger? Custom content does not dissapear on connection drop and as you said the content is there on her computer....

The folder in which custom content is stored is:
%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\<LiveID>\ObjectStore (XP)
%localappdata%\Microsoft\Messenger\<LiveID>\ObjectStore (Vista)

Anything inthere?

Yeah it is Windows Live Messenger the one that started, we used the remote assistance, and she had Windows Live Messenger opened, as I said on the change display image window all the display images are gone even the ones that come with the WLM, and the option that says Don't show a picture is clicked but also is grayed out.

Also I put on my first post that I did found the object store folder, all her custom emoticons, winks and such are there, I logged in on Windows Live Messenger and used ConCon Messenger Contact Retriever and backed up all her custom content without problem, so is not that the content got deleted.

I even searched on the administrative tools to see if it wasn't a service turned off but no, nothing there neither.

And yes my friend's laptop has Windows Vista.

Perhaps a simple reboot of the computer would be called for if it hasn't been done already.

We restarted the computer, I even used System Restore and nothing, this problem happened to another person too I saw it when I was searching on google for solutions but no solution was given to her neither

This has nothing to do with system restore or services...i suggest you backup the content and totally delete the custom content folders, restart messenger and then try adding some emoticons and smileys to the account.

if they get adde, you can then try and restore the content that you backed up... let us know what happens.

I did that too and didn't helped, that was the first thing I did before deciding to try the system restore.

The thing is that not only the custom content vanished, the content that comes with the msn doesn't appears on the change display picture, winks and backgrounds windows, physically is there

I can't add any content because I get an error saying that the image format is not valid whe it is perfectly valid, I tried with a normal JPG file, I couldn't even add content from the free offers msn puts on the menu where you see the recent emoticons, winks and backgrounds you used, it gets me an error that the content couldn't be installed.