Inside Windows Live Messenger:: Help

How Messenger Does [Not] Sign-in

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 18:55:17 GMT

Posted by Justin

Sign-in is a tricky area.

It's the most important feature -- a user that cannot sign-in isn't able to use the client.

What can go wrong:

After the sign-in button is pressed, the Messenger presence pawns get to dancing.

In the physical world, it's possible to dance without a partner. Or so I've heard.

Windows Live Messenger, being a communication client, works a lot better if it is able to communicate with other clients. It has to perform the following steps to cross the dance floor:

Authentication
One of the key tenets of Windows Live is security. In order to protect our users, we have to make sure that the Windows Live ID and password are correct.

If they are correct, the pawns keep dancing.
If they are incorrect, you will see a dialog with the following text:
- "Windows Live Messenger could not sign you in because the Windows Live ID you entered does not exist or is incorrect.
  
  If you have forgotten your password, click Forgot your password? at the bottom of the main Messenger window.
  
  Error code: 80048821"
Version Check
Once we've authenticated the user, we start talking to the Messenger servers. The server's response includes a description that states the minimum client version it'll support.

Sometimes, after a release, an issue will be discovered that requires updating the released client. In order to protect the user from experiencing the issue, the client will prompt the user to update to a newer version before continuing with the sign-in.
Acquiring Contacts
There wouldn't be a point to a communications client if there wasn't anyone to communicate with. Your contact list is stored on the Windows Live servers so it can roam between your different machines and be reused throughout Windows Live. One example of this is that all of your Messenger contacts show up in Windows Live Mail.

If you are running WLM [Windows Live Messenger] 8.0, it is possible that you can see the following issues:
- Empty contact list
- Missing contacts
- Prompts to add contacts that you've already added
"Don't Panic!" Your contacts are still on the server and are still intact. The reason this might occur is that we made a change to continue with sign-in, even if we weren't able to acquire all of the contacts.

However, in light of the feedback that we've received over this feature, there is a change, already available in the latest Windows Live Messenger 8.1 Beta, to fail sign-in if the client determines that it isn't able to acquire the complete contact list.

If we aren't able to acquire the contact list OR we aren't confident about the contact list we've previously acquired, you will see a dialog with the following text:
- "You cannot use Windows Live Messenger at this time because your contact list is not available. Please try again later.
  
  Click Help to learn more about your contact list.
  
  Error code: 81000378"
Tripping
There are a number of other things that can go wrong:
- The machine doesn't have an Internet connection.
- The machine is behind a proxy that requires authentication, and the authentication hasn't been set.
- The machine runs out of memory.
- The presence server is unavailable (possibly due to an upgrade).
- etcetera
If we hit any of these issues, the client will fail sync with a dialog apologizing for the inconvenience.

Recent Improvement Efforts:

Performance
In each release, the pawns are subjected to a quicker tune. In WLM 8.0, we made sure to delay the initialization of the new features to prevent sign-in performance degradations. The majority of sign-in scenarios are faster in WLM 8.0 than they were in previous releases.

In WLM 8.1, there was a substantial effort to optimize resign-in, and should be noticeably better. This 'fast reauth' codepath is triggered when you lose network connectivity or return to a machine after having signed in on a different machine.
Resiliency
If someone spills a drink on the dance floor, it shouldn't prevent everyone from dancing -- just move to a cleaner spot.

In WLM 8.0 [and in WLM 8.1], we made a number of changes to Messenger so that it can function if something goes wrong. For the majority of sign-ins, the only servers necessary are authentication and presence; to put this in context, Messenger has to talk to different servers to support the different features available in the client (examples: video chat, voice calling, instant messaging, offline messages, Windows Live Today, new mail notifications, alerts, tabs, games, etcetera).
Reporting
If all else fails, it's important to figure out why everything failed. Wendy covered CEIP in her recent post (Are you Experienced?!?!), and it's one of the tools we use to measure the state of sign-in.

In WLM 8.1, we made a number of improvements in relation to beta feedback. So keep on posting to the newsgroups and/or submitting feedback. I know it's painful when sign-in doesn't work, and we're sorry for any problems you have, but we greatly appreciate your help and understanding on the manner.

What to do when something goes wrong:

There are a number of resources available to our users. [Most of these were discussed in better detail in Nicole's "Help! Feedback! Marco! Polo!" post]

Connection Troubleshooter
This tool, built into Messenger, can be run to help Messenger self-diagnose the problem.

It is launched by opening the available under: "File->Tools->Options..." menu item.
Clicking the "Connections" tab.
Pressing the "Start..." button in the "Connection Troubleshooter" section.
Service Status
There is a link at the bottom of Messenger's main window called 'Service Status'. This will open up a webpage that is kept up-to-date with the status of the servers used by Messenger.
Support Blog
Messenger Support has their own blog (http://messenger-support.spaces.live.com/).
Newsgroups
There are a number of helpful people on the aforementioned Windows Live Messenger Newsgroup. Search there to see if others have already started a thread with a similar problem, and open a new topic if you don't find anything.
Support
When all fails, you can contact Messenger support.

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If you have a comment/question/concern/discussion topic/rant/rave/other - please head over to the Windows Live Messenger Newsgroup.

“Dear Messenger”

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 01:25:12 GMT

posted by Steve

Hi out there! Welcome to my first MessengerSays blog posting. I’m the new guy, Steve, and my role on the messenger team is to process all the comments, letters and other missives we get from a quarter of a billion (would that be one deci-Sagan?) customers – and make sense of it all.

By the way, we do get and read pretty much every single piece of feedback we get. But that’s another topic for another post down the road.

There’s another way to reach us, too, and that’s through technical support. Support’s a little different. A customer has a problem and needs some information that they can’t find in the help pages. This is supposed to be a dialog. The support page asks for your email. It asks for greater detail about the specific nature of what you’re having trouble with. And if your issue is unique enough to be something we don’t have a ready answer to, you wind up swapping emails with one of our support techie peeps – top notch folks who KNOW this system inside and out. Great for you ‘cause you get your problem fixed and great for us because we learn more about the complex and unique ways one deci-Sagan’s worth of customers use our product.

I’ll answer the first question first. Feedback is intended to be used for things like new feature requests: “Hey, you guys thought about doing this...?” Think of it as suggestion box (gee, maybe we ought to rename it that?!) And as with any suggestion box, the input is valuable but nothing ever comes back saying, “Yeah, we got that, we hear ya.” Even though we definitely do.

What goes in support?

“Yo! I can’t log in!” “My buddy list won’t come up.” “My display picture’s green and I look like Ugly Betty.”

You get the picture. It’s the place to go for issues which you can’t find in our extensive (and growing, we heard you when you told us to make that bigger and friendlier!) help pages.

As to the second question, yeah, there ought to be just one place to send “stuff” to the Messenger team. Ideas, complaints – and *gasp* even praise. By the way, THANK YOU for sending kudos our way, we tremendously appreciate hearing how much you love Messenger. Particular thanks to the very touching letter from the person who recently lost her hearing and now uses messenger to communicate with her sister and kids. Woah. Very cool.

But yeah, all that kinda stuff should go in one big bucket and we Microsofties should sort through it and figure out what’s support related and what’s feedback. We hear ya. We’re moving in that direction but these things take time.

So for now – rule of thumb: Support if you want a response. Feedback if it’s just a suggestion.

Now, how do I get support? Well, first you have to use our help system. Search for and read the pages which relate to your problem. Chances are really good that the answer's there already. If not -- and this shouldn't happen very often -- then click all the way down in the lower right hand corner "Get additional help" That will bring up a page of additional help options -- and Get Technical Support will be one of those options.

Ciao for now!

Help! Feedback! Marco! Polo!

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 18:17:37 GMT

posted by Nicole

It is *HOT* in Seattle . When I say hot I mean 100 degrees+ (37 for my fellow Canadians). Now I know this maybe not be a big deal for some people but when you are used to 72 +/- 10 degress it is a big deal. We don't have air conditioning and work turns off the air conditioning on the weekends so my husband and I got this little kiddie pool to splash around in. Best $8 we have ever spent - so much fun.

Now it was too small to even play the classic Marco Polo game. One person runs around the pool yelling Marco with their eyes closed. Everyone else must yell Polo and the Marco yeller tries to tag someone to take his or her place. Now imagine if you are playing running around with your eyes closing yelling Marco this but no one is yelling Polo... pretty fustrating.

I can imagmine some of you feel that way when you post comments here and we don't always reply. I have provided a little guide below on the best ways to communicate with the Windows Live Messenger team.

I can't sign in! I can't see my contacts! Help!

You need support - Messenger Support.

Things you can do:

1. Check out the Messenger help pages (In Messenger -> Help -> Help Topics)

2. Check out the Messegner support blog (http://messenger-support.spaces.msn.com/)

3. Contact Messenger suport (http://support.live.com/eform.aspx?productKey=wlmessenger)

Messenger please change\add\remove <fill in the blank>! Feedback!

You need to send us feedback asap.

There is only one thing you need to do:

Fill out the Messenger feedback form (http://feedback.live.com/eform.aspx?productkey=wlmessenger)

This blog post makes me laugh, cry, etc. so much that I want to Comment!

If you have comments about a blog post please head on over to the Windows Live Messenger Newsgroup.

Unable to sign into Windows Live Messenger – Error 80004005

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 19:26:06 GMT

posted by Leah

Hi!

A few people are getting a funny little error when they try to sign in to Messenger. It seems to be happening most often to those who have been upgrading regularly, something is getting mixed when you've had various versions on the same computer.

No fear! It's SO not a big deal - just follow the steps below, provided by our support team (don't you with there was a support team to solve every error in life? )

************

If you are encountering error 80004005 when signing in, please try the following:

I. Verify if you have the latest version of Windows Live Messenger by clicking on Help-->About Messenger and reading the Build number. You should see "Build 8.0.0792.00"

II. If you see any other number listed there, install the latest version of Messenger from http://get.live.com/messenger/overview .

III. Attempt to sign into Messenger again.

If you are still unable to sign in:

IV. Change Windows Explorer settings

a. Right click on the "Start" button and choose "Explore" from the short-cut menu to
open the "Windows Explorer" window.

b. In the "Windows Explorer" window , click on the "Tools" menu followed by "Folder Options". Click on the "View" tab. In the Advanced settings list, check"Show hidden files and folders" and uncheck the option "Hide extensions for known file types" under Hidden files and folders. Click on "OK" to close the "Folder Options" window.

c. In the "Windows Explorer" window, click on the "View" menu followed by "Explorer bar" and ensure that the "Folders" option is checked. This will ensure that you are able to see the folder list on the left side of the Windows Explorer window.

V. Delete the Contacts Cache folder by following the steps below:

a. Right click on the "Start" button, choose "Explore" from the short-cut menu to open the "Windows Explorer" window.

b. In the "Windows Explorer" window, goto the Folder list on the left pane and navigate to the folder C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Windows logon name>\Contacts\<Your Messenger email address> where <Windows Logon name> is the login name you use to sign into windows and <Your Messenger email address> is the address that you use to sign into Messenger

c. Delete all the files that are within the <Your Messenger email address> folder.

d. Right click on the "Start" button, choose "Explore" from the short-cut menuto open the "Windows Explorer" window.

e. In the "Windows Explorer" window, goto the Folder list on the left pane and navigate to the folder C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Windows logon name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\<Your Messenger email address> where <Windows Logon name> is the login name you use to sign into windows and <Your Messenger email address> is the address that you use to sign into Messenger.

f. Delete the "real" and the "shadow" folders that are within the <Your Messenger email address> folder.

VI. Sign into Messenger again.

VII. If the problem persists please contact Windows Live Messenger support at http://support.live.com.