Shoot The Messenger

Every time I start to feel warm and fuzzy about Microsoft something jumps up and slaps me back to reality. Here’s my latest slap:

For some reason my Trillian messenger wasn’t connecting to MSN because of some weirdness with my ISP so I had to download and install the 9 MB behemoth that is MSN Messenger. As usual it tried to change my homepage (at least it asked first, which I don’t remember the MSN Search bar doing so) but it worked ok. But try closing it down and you get an error message:

Which says:

There are other applications currently using features provided by MSN Messenger.  You must close these other applications before you can exit MSN Messenger.  These applications may include Outlook, Outlook Express, MSN, MSN Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Three Degrees.

Whatever Three Degrees is. (Why hasn’t Diana Ross sued yet?) Why should I have to close all these programs just to close this clunky jalopy of a program? I thought Microsoft was past all this nonsense? I didn’t have to close those programs to install the messenger, so I can’t imagine they have somehow become seamlessly integrated with Messenger inbetween whiles. Or could they? And if they could, why wasn’t I asked? And is this a good thing? No wonder my mail box is full of plaintive complaints from folk who feel their computer’s been taking over by aliens. Or zombies. Whatever.

Advice for today: Until further notice, don’t install anything that, well, has Microsoft on it.

Comments

[Yaron]

Hi,

Could you please elaborate more on the problems your ISP is having with Trillian?
As far as I know, and noticed, Trillian connects to MSN in pretty much exactly the same way MSN Messenger does, so I'm curious...

As for alternatives, while a Trillian user myself, I have friends using both Miranda and Gaim, and all seem pretty satisfied.

[Scott_H]

I had that problem a while back, too. I use Trillian, but for some reason (I still have no idea why) I wasn't able to work with new MSN contacts in Trillian without first using MSN Messenger to add them to my contact list. So, I'd open Messenger (the version that installs by default with Win XP Home), add the contact, attempt to close Messenger, and get that error message.

I eventually solved the problem by killing the process with Task Manager. Task Manager is a beautiful tool -- helps fix many ills.

[farkas]

Hi,

1) If your email is open, close it.

2) Open the Task Manager via CTL/Alt/Del and scroll to msn.exe, highlight it and click on End Task.

3) Right-click on Messenger icon and click on exit...

Cheers,

farkas