Mike Southby

As much as I want to dislike it owing to all the bloat-ware and popups, I find that time after time I come back to Windows Live Messenger; it’s inevitable really.  You see whilst I try and ask friends to join other networks as I much prefer the client, almost all of my friends as a singularity use Live Messenger.  Of course, I could use another client such as the excellent Pidgin which has multi-platform support but as much as I don’t want to admit it, Live Messenger on balance suits my needs well (taking into account not only chat support, but also conferencing and file sharing, both of which I require regularly).

When you run Live Messenger within Windows 7 it permanently takes up space in the taskbar, now this may not sound like a huge issue but I associate applications running in the taskbar as open, forefront applications.  I much preferred previous versions of Windows whereby Live Messenger would run in the background with a smaller less obtrusive icon in the system tray.   It’s annoying that you cannot remove this icon without not only closing down Live Messenger but also, logging off.

Thankfully, I have discovered a way of overcoming this and moving the icon back to its rightful place, in the system tray:

• The first thing that you need to do is to find the actual file location of Live Messenger.  To do this, open Task Manager (right click on an empty space somewhere along the taskbar and click Start Task Manager)
• Click in the Processes tab and scroll down to find msnmsgr.exe
• Right click msnmsgr.exe and click Open File Location
• Windows Explorer will now open in the folder where msnmsgr.exe is located
• You can now close down the running Live Messenger, right click on the Messenger icon in the taskbar and click Close Window
• In the Windows Explorer window, right click on msnmsgr.exe and click Properties
• In the Properties windows, click on the Compatibility tab
• Click to select Run this program in compatibility mode for and in the drop down box select Windows Vista (Service Pack 2)
• Click OK
• Close the Windows Explorer Window

Now all you need to do is run Live Messenger again.  You’ll now find that when you click the ‘X’ it will minimise into the system tray as it used to and not take up space in the taskbar.  Job done.

So at long last it would seem that Facebook have opened up their chat service to allow you to use the feature ‘off site’ by adding your account to one of many popular chat clients.  Facebook are using the Jabber (XMPP) open source technology which is supported by most popular instant messaging clients including Pidgin, iChat, Adium and Miranda.  It will also work with the latest release of AIM.

Further information can be found here where you’ll also be able to find specific instructions for setting up YOUR username on your chosen client.