Dermot's Rants

To those who liked the big smileys and want them back i Built the following program YBS



YBS backs up your old smiley folder and installs the big smileys and copys your local emoticon xml

You can revert back to the smaller smileys by clicking "Go Small?"

YBS will close Yahoo! Messenger on startup to stop file permission Errors

YBS is fully Vista UAC Compliant

YBS is compiled in Visual Studio 2008 C# so requires the .NET framework [Get it here]

Bugs and comments are welcome!

Download YBS [Here]

I have built a small application in C# that will make voice work in Yahoo! Messenger.

It will also allow you to have voice in Yahoo! 3rd party chat clients also.

For vista x32 bit only.

You can get it at here -> Vista Voice Fix

Any bugs or problems please leave a comment.

Yahoo! have posted in their blog that they plan to officially make Y! Messenger 5.5 and 5.6 dead!.

To quote Sarah bacon from Y! Messenger Blog

As Yahoo! Messenger gets older (we’re up to version 9.0 now!), so too do some of the “vintage” versions that are still in use by a few people. In an effort to provide the best experience for our users and maintain high security standards, we will officially retire Yahoo! Messenger 5.5 and 5.6 on April 2, 2008. This means that if you are currently using one of those versions, you will no longer be able to sign in and use it after April 1.

If you are a 5.5 or 5.6 user, you have two options for continuing to use Yahoo! Messenger:

This would mean it's finally an official statement that YMSG10/11 protocols will be going also!

It surprizes me that they have not removed support for version 6.0 also but that will come in due time i guess.

You can read more about it at Y! End of Life!

Remove windows live messenger advertisements

1. Go here: http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/
2. Download Resource Hacker ver. 3.4.0 (Zip File 541kb).
3. After unzipping the contents open ResHacker.exe.
4. Open in Resource Hacker (File -> Open...) msgsres.dll located in (in most cases):

C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger
or
C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger

5. Click on View -> Find Text... on the menu bar.
6. On the "Find what:" field put in:
7. Constrainer layoutpos=top ID=Atom(SSConstrainer) Layout=FillLayout()
8. Change layoutpos value from top to none.
9. The line should now look like:
10. Constrainer layoutpos=none ID=Atom(SSConstrainer) Layout=FillLayout()
11. Click on Compile Script.
12. Click Save (File -> Save)
13. Open Messenger. Enjoy your now ad-less version of Live Messenger!

There's a quick way you can enable or disable this annoying window from the command line:

Disable UAC

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Enable UAC

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

After you enable or disable UAC, you will have to reboot your computer for the changes to take effect.

There is also another Way to Disable and enable UAC

Open up Control Panel, and type in user account into the search box

You will see the options below..

Ok im not sure if the trackbacks are working so stew mentioned i should mention his and see if the trackback works.

So if you wanna read about the 9.0 mission to install check out link below.

http://www.carbonize.co.uk/Blog/index.php?/archives/26-Yahoo-Messenger-9-Ad-Removal.html

It would seem a lot of Vista users are having an issue getting voice working in messenger

This can be caused by a couple of factors

1. Don't have the latest Yahoo! Messenger
2. Don't have the DSP Group truspeech codec installed
3. Don't have a mic plugged in (yes you need to)
4. UAC is blocking it

Please note this fix is for Y! Messenger not third party chat clients

Well i'll try to explain the motion needed to install it correctly.

Download the following two files to your Desktop

http://www.bytescribe.com/downloads/tsp_codec_install.exe

http://us.dl1.yimg.com/download.yahoo.com/dl/msgr8/us/ymsgr810_421_us.exe

Yahoo! have recently released 9.0 Beta that you can try also, link below !!

http://us.dl1.yimg.com/download.yahoo.com/dl/msgr9/us/ymsgr900_922_us.exe

Right Click ymsgr810_421_us.exe on your desktop
Select Run As Administrator like pic below..



If you don't see that option when you right click do the following..

Right Click ymsgr810_421_us.exe on your desktop
Select Properties
Select Compatability tab
Tick Run this program As Administrator like pic below..
Press Apply then ok



Follow the install and pick yes to give Messenger full access while installing.

Do the same process above for the tsp_codec_install.exe on your desktop

Then reboot, plug in your mic and start yahoo messenger and join chat.

Voice should work fine.

Isn't it amazing how it's October already and the late nights have begun and now Halloween beckons upon us and the kids running about dressed up in all sorts of costumes and the fireworks, they can be fun.

Also marks my Birthday and the last one in my twenties i will have, isn't it depressing when you start thinking about your age, lol I feel old already and thinking about it just make it all so much better...not.

Yahoo! still haven't fixed chat and the "Zombie bot" or "Sticky bot" situation has not been rectified still, So how long does it take a chat server engineer to fix a simple timeout disconnect or verified logout on a server? Perhaps Yahoo! doesn't know what to do and perhaps they have no got competent enough staff to deal with it and they really should just give up.

I actually did yahoo! a service and reported 600 bot id's that were been used to boot people in various chatrooms, Now you think it would be straight forward enough for yahoo! to actually see that these id's were created for malicious purposes since every one of them were the same name with a indexed number indent on the end of them.

However Yahoo! are not that smart it seems and sent me back an e-mail (template from some dumbass CC worker) telling me that i should ignore them, Well thats all good if i could actually ignore more than 99 (Yahoo ignore limit is 99) as after 99 ignored bots i would not be able to ignore anymore so i would then have 501 accounts that were malicious booting me without the option to ignore...the level of bad communication and below average intelligence in Yahoo! astonishes me sometimes.

You would think after 11 years that yahoo! would have licked Chat and Chat server logistics and services!

Over the last few weeks Yahoo! have rolled out a number of changes to the chat system.

Unfortunely with these updates have come problems after problems specially with captcha.

First they allowed voice chat pre captcha so voice bots were not effected

Disconnects from chat were not been handled and your id could lie in a chatroom for weeks

Yahoo release Yahoo! Messenger 8.1.0.421 with more DLL ( Dynamic Link Libary) only changes.

Yahoo Really need to Build the Captcha into the system better for it to work without remorse.

They Have now changed the way the captcha is received and it stops pre-captcha from getting voice.

Sooner or later they will get it right.

Late last night GMT time Yahoo have finally added Captcha support to chat.

They have also fixed the "Chat Error" issue that was disallowing every few posts to be delivered to the room.

With the new Captcha rules you will have to go to the link yahoo send you when you go to enter a room and must do it for every room you desire to visit from now on.

This will seriously hinder the bots in yahoo! chat but may seem tedious to the normal user who is used to room hopping or have several "Favourite" rooms.

Yahoo! have also released a new build of Yahoo! Messenger

The new build in question is Y! Messenger 8.1.0.419

At this time all chat bots have been blocked from chat but this may change if the bots work around the basic Captcha using edge detection or another method of image reading technology.

Lets hope they just give up.

Yahoo! today disconnected all the chat servers momentarily to fix some issues as of late.

The post in question was on the Yahoo! Messenger Blog

- Been throw into random rooms has been rectified
- Profiles showing registered information age has been fixed to show profiles
- New chat servers will now reply when a room is full
- Roomlist categories showing right amount
- Not so many "Chat error" messages now but still present

Some downsides of the latest update!

- Some unlisted rooms have somewhat "Vanished"
- Does not rectify the porn bot issue and they will just refill the rooms
- captcha still not implemented
- "Communication errors" still present

Hats off to yahoo though for trying and hopefully will roll out more fixes soon!