Windows Live Messenger 8.1 & Windows Media Player 11 both DOA

[Sabretech]

I use XP as my OS.

I previously had MSN messenger 4.6.

I upgraded to Windows live messenger 8.1 and it worked fine for a few months. Then I found that it was annoying me a little by always starting whenever I booted up so I tried to remove it from the startup folder. This didn't really work so I uninstalled it and went back to MSN 4.6.

However it still kept trying to start on boot which was affecting 4.6 so in my (lack off) wisdom I went into the registry to try and remove the references to it.

Now Windows Live Messenger 8.1 AND windows media Player 11 will not work at all!

I have tried uninstalling them completely and reinstalling them. I have tried going back to system restore points, I have tried uninstalling them for a few weeks and reinstalling them.

After every attempt on booting up the OS I immediately get WLM 8.1 has encountered a serious error and needs to close. If I try and open the application then I get the same message whatever else is open or closed.

When I try and play a media clip it hangs or crashes every time displaying this message, "Windows Media Player has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.."

I have tried reg edit and reg clean programs but now think that I am just guessing so want some proper help before I break other applications.

HELP me undo this and I promise never to touch my registry ever again!!!

Sabretech

 

[Sabretech]

Is there nobody who can help me with this please?

 

[Sabretech]

Well I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your kind words of help and support. I'll just take in a moment to fill myself with the kindness and warmth of your support for me and I'll be sure to make sure that if any of you have a problem that I give you equal support to help you as you have helped me. Many thanks again.

 

[waterproof]

There's a option for Messenger not to start up automatically

 

[jtickner1]

try a system restore, to a date before you tinkered with the registry. (not 100% sure if system restores fix registry changes but try it anyway) you should also save your registry before you muck around with it incase something does go wrong, in this case it has.

As waterproof said messenger does have an option for disabling it's auto start

Tools > Options > General > "Automatically run Windows Live Messenger when i log on to windows" uncheck the box to disable it.

Well I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your kind words of help and support. I'll just take in a moment to fill myself with the kindness and warmth of your support for me and I'll be sure to make sure that if any of you have a problem that I give you equal support to help you as you have helped me. Many thanks again.

if thats sarcasm, which i think it is, not everyone on here has the solution for everything and i only just saw this thread because the software and utilities is pretty much unknown ground for me. i have rarely seen anyone's problem go unsolved here, it's one of the best sites that offer support i have seen. If you cant find your answer here you can always google your problem,

hopefully what i said helps you

 

[Sabretech]

Thank you for your help jt and waterproof. I have tried systems restore and am aware of the ability to not start messenger at start up. My problem is however that I wish to run Live messenger and cannot get it to work, I want it to work. The sarcasm was because I had not had a single reply for over a month and I assumed on a forum such as this that a problem with messenger and media player would be relatively simple as it is very commonly used. When I have had friends with virus problems which are far more rare they have had tens of replies in hours or days asking for log files etc to help them and yet nobody seemed interested in my problem.

That said having tried both of your suggestions I still cannot use windows media player or live messenger but I do genuinely thank you for trying.

ST

 

[jtickner1]

Try installing WMP 10 and see what happens?

There is also WLM 2008 v8.5 try that, you might just encounter the same error, but it's worth a shot, sorry i cant be of more help, don't really know to much about all this stuff, if i can't get something to work i google my problem or post a thread here,

goodluck