Shoutbox

Hey all

I used to have the penultimate version of MSN Messenger installed on my PC but my hard drive bust and I had to buy a new one. Before I did though I was able to copy a load of data from my old drive and thus copied it back over to the new profile I created on my replacement drive.
I then downloaded the new Windows Live Messenger but obviously contained in the info I copied over from my corrupt drive was the list of my contacts somewhere and having downloaded the software it found them twice and therefore each contact got duplicated.
I thought I could just go through them and delete the ones that weren't signed in (which proved difficult as not all of my contacts use MSN regularly so have to wait until they sign in to tell which one is the "live" contact) but each time I was exiting it didn't seem to overwrite anything and so the next time I launched Messenger the duplicates were back again.

What I would like to know is does anybody out there know where abouts on my hard drive my contacts list is stored? And if so do you also know if it is possible to simply delete duplicate entries at this location to avoid all this, or is there any other way I can rectify this problem (except deleting everybody and asking them to re-add me of course!).

Thank you very much for your time

Your contact list is not stored on the hard drive, but on servers. I don't have an solution for your actual problem, but I would simply try with uninstalling WLM and install it again, but I don't think this will make a difference, as the contacts are, like I said, on a server so if you indeed made duplicate entries of each contact they would not be removed from your contact list.
However, the protocol WLM uses should, AFAIK, prevent duplicate entries (two contacts with the same e-mail), so it sounds a bit odd that you have identical copies of your contacts. When a contact comes online, does he or she only come online on one of the contact entries?
If you feel uncomfortable with removing WLM entirely, you can backup your contact list into a file by choosing Contacts on the main WLM window and then choose Backup contacts (I'm not able to give you the exact English name, but you should be able to figure it out - it's at the bottom of the Contacts menu). Note that the file is no more than a text file with a different extension, which contains a list of e-mail addresses. WLM will continue to retrieve contact information from it's servers even after the backup.

Thanks for the reply.
I thought this too (saved on servers) but it must be to do with the copying of the old data over to my new hard drive.

In answer to your question - when a contact signs in, only ONE of the versions I have lights up / shows as online. The other one, the duplicate, is pretty much redundant.

quote:

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Originally posted by mikewazowski
Thanks for the reply.
I thought this too (saved on servers) but it must be to do with the copying of the old data over to my new hard drive.

In answer to your question - when a contact signs in, only ONE of the versions I have lights up / shows as online. The other one, the duplicate, is pretty much redundant.

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If nothing seems to help, one solution is to install Plus! and leave it running as it is for a while, then you could use the contact list cleaner to check who have been online and who haven't. If you are lucky, the contact list cleaner might pick up the duplicates as contacts that don't have you on their list, making it easy to remove them, but this is just a theory and you shouldn't take my word for it.
Could you check if the duplicates have the exact same e-mail address? And can you confirm that if you delete the "wrong" duplicate the other entry for that contact doesn't show as online when the contact is online?

Couldn't it be a cache problem?
That's what i would blame it on....

Vilkku:
- I already have Plus! installed.
- I have tried that contact list cleaner but the duplicates didn;t show up in there - just one contact per email address.
- All the duplicates have the same email address.
- If I delete the "wrong" contact the other entry will show as online when they are online.

Voldemort:
- How would you suggest I go about cleaning that cache out please?


Thanks all

First uninstall messenger and then do the proceadure...

quote:

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Originally posted by cookie revised

# Remove all the cache and storage directories used by Messenger (if they still exist):

C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Application Data\Microsoft\MSN Messenger\
C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Call\
C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Messenger\
C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\
C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\
C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Contacts\
C:\Windows\Temp\MessengerCache\

and the main folder:
C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger\

note: "C:\Documents and Settings\...", "C:\Program Files", "C:\Windows\Temp" may be named differently on your computer. If so, find the appropriate root directories.

You can do this by going to you command prompt (Start > Run > cmd) and type "CD xxxx" where xxxx can be:
%programfiles%          to go to your "C:\Program Files\"
%temp% or %tmp%    to go to your "C:\Windows\Temp\"
%userprofile%             to go to your "C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\"

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UPDATE: Well something's happened !!

I followed your instructions word for word Voldemort. The only problem I had was when it came to deleting the 'Windows Live Contacts' folder - it wouldn't allow me to delete it as it kept erroring with "folder is not empty". It wouldn't even let me into the folder to check what was in there - when I tried it froze and eventually came up with "C: is not formatted, would you like to format it now?" to which I obviously responded NO. I did try in safe mode too but had the same issue. So I left that one. All the others deleted fine.

When I then reinstalled Windows Live it magically got rid of all the duplicates. I had also manually deleted the seperate groups I had before uninstalling Messenger too so they were all listed under one category. I was able to recreate my groups and start sorting my contacts out again one by one. There was a couple of issues to start with - with contacts removing themselves from the groups I had added them to and plonking themselves back in the generic group but after a reattempt it seemed fine.

Have exited and relaunched Messenger a few times now and the contacts seem to have stayed in their designated groups and no duplicates have come back to haunt me so all is good at the moment.

Thank you ever so much for all your time and help, it has been duly noted and is very much appreciated. Thanks again.

HOLD ON, DON'T GET TOO EXCITED: I spoke too soon !!

Messenger's connection keeps dropping for some reason and it is setup to automatically reconnect. However, on doing this the contacts, albeit still not duplicated (which is good), have again become messed up and decided to remove theselves from the groups I put them in and in what appears to be a random move reassigned themselves all over the shop.

So, be aware of this if you come across the same problem.

Any ideas anyone on this?

Also for the continuos loss of connection? And while we're at it - it seems to be taking an absolute age to sign-in which also freezes out any other applications I have running in the process. So, you can imagine who annoying and frustrating that is when it keeps dropping and attempting reconnection every 5 bleedin' minutes !!