MSN and accentuating the inherent evils of perpetual upgrades...

[Cunjo]

I'm probably safe in saying that I'm not the only one who thinks the new MSN sucks. MSN 7 introduced a plethera of wonderful new features, such as:

* The ability to destroy your custom smileys as you add them
* The ability to steal the active window whenever someone messages you, making you input whatever you were typing into the new chat window (like passwords - joy)
* More obnoxious advertisements
* A more resource intensive and ultimately ugly interface
* The ability to make unhelpful input suggestions as you type (if they bring in paperclip somewhere down the road, I'm gonna vomit)
* Larger filesize
* The ability to force you to view bad handwriting in IM
* The ability to crash when changing the background
* Various other program-crash-related abilities

The list goes on...


What I really, REALLY want, is to be able to roll back to an earlier version, or re-install 6.2. Therein lies the problem... after uninstalling 7.0 and attempting to install 6.2, I get this lovely message, telling me to update, and if I refuse, it aborts the logon. (if I accept, it installs 7.0, and we're back to square 1).

One of my friends uses 6.2. He's on MSN every day, and has never been forced to upgrade, or endure the new and improved tortures of MSN 7. I assume it is some bug or other. While I never thought I would be asking how to cause more bugs in Microsoft software (it normally has more than enough for me), I would like to know if anyone here knows how I might get it to let me log on with 6.2. Is there soem registry value that I can alter, that will cause MSN to neglect inforcement of the new updates?

Thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

-Cunjo
because newer is not always better


Gateway 400VTX ACPI laptop; 1.18/2.20GHz ACPI-compliant P4; 512MB (2x256) DDR SDRAM; generic onboard 128MB Gcard; Dual-Boot OS(Windows XP Home / Mandriva Linux 2005 L-E)

 

[Osiris]

You are never forced to upgrade, it always askes you first. Second, I beleive you should try Trillian.

 

[Cunjo]

Sure, it asks first. and if you say "no", it says "okay, but you can't log on". Am I the only one it does this to? how can I get it to let me log on with the old one?

I have trillian. Used it for a long time. There are some things I like about it, and some things I don't. I want to use MSN, and I don't want to use MSN 7.

My favorite IM program is Kopete, but I can't use that so long as I have a Microsoft wireless card - I can't afford something better right now.

 

[Osiris]

Are you paying for the MSN subscription?

 

[Cunjo]

No.
and never will.

I've given Microsoft enough money for one lifetime.

 

[Osiris]

I dont see how it wont let you log on if you dont upgrade. I'm still using 6.2 on one of my machines

 

[Cunjo]

Then one of us has a bug in the program. I would assume it to be you, since forcing the upgrade is something Microsoft has been doing with MSMSGS for some time now. Did you see the screencap I posted? that window appears when I click the "sign in" button, and if I select "no", it doesn't sign me in - same thing MSMSGS has always done on all of the computers I've used it on.

What I want to know, is what makes you special, that you can sign in with 6.2. Can somebody please tell me how to reproduce the situation on my computer? thanks.

 

[Tyler1989]

It's your fault for using an inferior messenger program. You are 100% At fualt you should use trillian.

 

[Cunjo]

Can we please cut the trillian crap? If I wanted to use trillian, I would use trillian.
As it stands, Trillian is not superior - by any stretch - at what I want to use it for.

If you don't have anything productive to contribute to this thread, then please, by all means, don't click that reply button and serenade us all with your substanceless opinions.

Thank you.

 

[Tro1086]

You could try uninstalling messenger and then using a registery cleaner program to see if it will delete msn messenger from the system registery.

The reg cleaner program I have is called "TweakNow RegCleaner", I dont know how good it is, it found a few old entries when I first ran it and I deleted them and havnt had any problems. I usually run it after I uninstall programs to see if they leave behind anything in the registery, but either the programs are actually uninstalling there registery entry, or my RegCleaner isnt finding them, dunno.

I think it just knows that the new version has been installed on your machine before and its not letting you go back, ususally programs know because they never delete there entery in the registery when you 'uninstall' them. Did you uninstall MSN first before you tried reinstalling the older one? You could try manually deleting all registery enteries from MSN but that could be very dangerous if you delete a wrong file. There is the option of reformating your hard drive, but that is a major pain in the a$$ for something as small as MSN. I have seen programs on the internet like one from Ashampoo that are suposed to COMPLETELY remove programs from your system that you want to get rid of, you could try using this to get rid of MSN, and then reintall an older version.

I know its posible to run older versions of MSN thou, when I talk to some of my friends on MSN, they have versions from before when it started using all the 'display picture' crap next to your and the other persons names when chatting.

I have MSN 7 and didnt really notice any changes between the version i had before and 7, but I have no idea which version I had before, but it was whatever came before 7.0. I usually just let it update when it tells me theres a new one.

I feel your pain thou, sometimes updates can really suck when you already like the program the way it is. I remember reverting Napster back to an older version because they released a new crappy one that sucked major balls. That was back in the day thou before free Napster got shut down.

Sorry for the long post, hopefully something I said can help you atleast.