WLM 8.5 Install Error Message - No Code

[Adombom]

Hello folks.

Hopefully someone here can give me a hand, because this issue is baffling me!

I recently installed Windows XP Pro x64 (with SP2) on a friend's computer, and as we were setting everything up, he had indicated to me that he wanted to try out WLM 2009 Beta (which I was kinda iffy about in the first place). So, we downloaded it and attempted the install, however it wasn't working, so we said "Scrap it!" and downloaded the MSI package for 8.5 (the most recent) from Softpedia, because the one from Microsoft doesn't play nice with XP Pro x64.

As soon as we tried to run the install, we get the error message as follows, and it's not verbatim, but it should be enough to get the gist:

"Your computer has a newer version of Windows Live Messenger than the one you are trying to install. To install an older version, first remove the current version and then run this set up."

So, naturally, I removed what I thought was every instance of Windows Live Messenger on his computer, and I even gave the registry a clean up, but to no avail when trying to install it, I get that same error message.

I run a similar spec'd computer with XP Pro x64 and have never had a problem like this, so I'm leaning towards it being the WLM 2009 installer causing the issue.

Any suggestions or fixes you have in mind would be great!

Thank You, and have a wonderful day!

[patndoris]

It won't show as Windows Live Messenger in Add/Remove programs. It will show as Windows Live Beta. Unless your friend is using one of the other products it seems to want to install as well, I'd suggest removing all the Live Beta programs installed. Then try a fresh install of the last stable version and see if it helps.

[Adombom]

Thanks for the reply!

I did look for anything even remotely resembling Windows Live, there was an instance of Windows Live which I removed, there's nothing pertaining to Windows Live in his Add/Remove programs right now, but we still get the message. Any other ideas?

EDIT: I just suggested to him that he download the Windows Live Clean-up Utility, run it and try again, we'll see how that goes.

EDIT 2: And the clean-up utility didn't help.

[Philip]

Download the Windows Live 2009 Beta from the Windows Live site and install it again. When the installation is done, go to Add/Remove Programs, and look for the Windows Live Beta entry (as Doris mentioned in her post). Then uninstall it. Reboot for good measure.

In your first post, when you mentioned that the 2009 Beta wasn't working, exactly what error/s came up? That would be helpful to us when troubleshooting this.

[Adombom]

Thank for the advice, Philip!

I'll tell him to give that a try. As for any error messages, there were none, it opened the "Copying Files" dialog box and when that was finished, nothing.

[Philip]

Adombom, I did some searching at this site; apparently Windows Live Messenger 8.0 is the last version that Windows XP Pro x64 officially supports.

However, if you read further down, the writer says that WLM8.5 can be installed in XP x64. To quote,

What is so ironic is that Windows Live Messenger is fully compatible with XP x64, as a matter of fact I’m using it right now. So what you have to do is download the file I mentioned that the unsupported installer downloads. Take note though that you will not get any prompts during the install, it is silent, since you are supposed to make those choices in the unsupported installer… What this means is that you are saved the trouble of unticking the boxes about installing MS toolbars and changing your browsers home page to the dreaded MSN sites.

Also worth mentioning is that Windows XP x64 shares its codebase with Windows Server 2003 x64 and even uses the same service packs!) So this should apply to Server 2003 as well, just like drivers for either OS work fine with each other.

You can download the bare MSI file of Windows Live Messenger v8.5.1302.1018 here. While you are at it check out A-Patch that allows you to disable many annoying features of MSN like advertising - it’s beyond me why MS advertises in their own client. And when you have come to your senses you can may as well download a decent chatting client instead .

Oh, and here is the command to uninstall the Windows Messenger (not the same as MSN Messenger OR Live Messenger) that is bundled by default with the OS. Just copy and paste the following into Start > Run and Windows Messenger will be gone: RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove

With grateful thanks to Per Hansson, the writer of the above quoted post.

Hope this helps your friend!