Windows Live Messenger - discontinued

What works

Almost everything I tested. That would include convo window backgrounds (...almost...), different fonts, Display pictures, and most other basic functions.

What does not

Winks. At least, they won't without the special tweak mentioned to get flash going with it.

Backgrounds work the first time a convo window is opened when the program starts, but if the window is streched in any way, it turns black.

Display pictures work but still have to be small to be seen. They also change at random each time the user logs in.

The MSN Today Window (but really, who cares? It's annoying IMO).

The installer doesn't run properly the first time and doesn't extract and add a .dll (see my comment), but it can be retrieved off the internet if one searches hard enough. It also, in my case, neglected to add icons on the desktop, or any at all. I had to create one.

Minimizing the window and restoring it, then typing. The focus of typing gets drawn away from the convo window itself sometimes (but it seems to have improved since my last entry. Now it's become more of a 50/50 chance it will keep focus). In the event that you lose focus, click the font option in the convo window and click okay when the font selection window comes up, and focus will be restored.

The flashing alert that normally takes place in taskbar tabs for convo windows, but the sound alert works fine.

Workarounds

What was not tested

Running WINE on highspeed internet (I used OEM Conexant HSF modem drivers from Dell), but I can't see a reason why it wouldn't work on highspeed if WINE was able to switch over the connection to my dial-up connection.

Webcam and Mic functions

Talking to a person logged in on their mobile

The Windows Media Player plugin that displays what is playing (I have WMP 10 properly installed but it doesn't run stable enough to be useful).

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

I enabled some DLL overrides to maximize the program's performance. I downloaded msxml3.dll, gdiplus.dll, and riched20.dll and set the overrides to native (not native then bulletin, just native). It seems to help a little bit. It still don't work in XP mode yet.

- Set wine to Win2K

- Do sh winetricks riched20 msxml3 flash

Then just install and enjoy it.