Shoutbox

No, there is no registry key which will prevent the user to turn on/off Messenger logging.

Even if there was a registry key to prevent it, it would be relative easy for the user to delete such a registry key so that he could turn that option off again. And/or the user could always manually set the registry key MessageLoggingEnabled to REG_DWORD 0.

In other words: there is no way to force Message logging! It will always be a choice of the user.

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In Windows Live Messenger, the options under Tools > Options > Messages > Message History can be found in the registry under:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSNMessenger\PerPassportSettings\<Windows Live Id Hash>\
MessageLoggingEnabled
MessageLogShowHistory
MessageLogPath


1. MessageLoggingEnabled
Type: REG_BINARY or REG_DWORD
Description: Key for the option "Automatically keep a history of my conversations"
When logging is disabled this key has a REG_DWORD value of 0.
When logging is enabled this key has a special REG_BINARY value. Dunno what the value represents but it might be some kind of encoding/hash.

2. MessageLogShowHistory
Type: REG_DWORD
Description: key for the option "Show my last conversation in new conversation windows"
When you have disabled this, the registry value is 0.
When you have enabled this, the registry value is 1.

3. MessageLogPath
Type: REG_SZ
Description: key for the option "Save my conversations in this folder:"
This key holds the path where the log files will be saved.

4. MessageLogVersion
Type: REG_BINARY
Description: this key does not have an associated option in the options panel of Messenger. It contains the type/version of the log files. Format is unknown.