quote:
Originally posted by zefijo
You say to never download from unofficial sources but if the product is not available on official sources we don't have other choice than downloading on others sites.
As Nanafreak already pointed out, if there is no official source it means no
official version exists. Especially with free programs like Messenger Plus! there is no reason what-so-ever that a working version would not be made public on an official source! So NEVER download something like that from unofficial untrusted sources.
Using unofficial stuff means using stuff which might be malicious, buggy, not working, etc. Stuff which might be FAKE and NOT do what it promisses to do.
This is EXACTLY how virusses and other malicous stuff spread and work. A malicious program is never going to advertise itself as something good, it wil always try to trick you.
--------------------------------------------
quote:
Originally posted by djdannyp
your contact list is stored on servers, not locally
Although that is true, a local client (read: malicious program) can easly wipe the contactlist. When the protocol is used properly (which is not that difficult to do), the remote contactlist on the servers is updated, meaning it is wipe too...
How else are local changes (eg: contacts adding, blocking, removing, etc) recorded on the servers?
Nevertheless, it will indeed never hurt to try to access your contactlist via webmessenger.
quote:
Originally posted by djdannyp
reformatting your hard-drive will definitely not solve any problem of this nature
It will indeed not restore his contactlist.
But it WILL get rid of the malicious program. If you don't remove the malicious program you can try to fix what you want, it will wipe the contactlist again and again until the program is removed.
quote:
Originally posted by djdannyp
re-install 8.5, and try that
It is this on its own which would do no good at all! Simply reinstalling 8.5 will solve nothing at all. The malicious program wont be removed.
And if only the local cache of the contactlist was wiped (lets hope for that), just re-installing 8.5 would actually increase the chances that the local (empty) list is copied to the servers, wiping everything permanently. In other words, it might do even more damage.
Hence why it was suggested to uninstall everything, including Windows Live Messenger itself, manually removing any left-over directories, rebooting the computer in safe mode, doing a system wide scan/cleanage, and only then reinstall Windows Live Messenger again.
-------------------------
To add to all this: the Messenger protocol does not allow for removing contacts just like that. Both parties (you and the contact) must delete eachother before the link between the two is completely gone.
This means that your contactlist might still be able to be retrieved via a workaround. Check with a tool, like
Noroom's Listmanager, who has added you on their contactlist list (this is called the Reverse List). From this list you can start adding everyone back again (I believe this is even directly possible via Noroom's listmanager).
And because your contacts didn't deleted you, they wont recieve a "xxx has requested to be added" notification either, so they wont be bothered.
/ 
