Yahoo Messenger 7....problems

system goes into safe mode

Published on September 17, 2005 By starkers In Internet

My wife has friends with whom she keeps in touch on yahoo messenger, which is all well and good....if ever she can get me out of WC long enough

Seriously though, we downloaded the most recent version, as recommended, but when it's installed our system goes into safe mode, making it rather difficult to read anything on the screen. We have tried uninstalling and reinstalling without success, with no response from yahoo in days now, and wonder if anyone here has any ideas as to resolving this issue. We have tried links to previous versions but all take us to the most recent one, so that is not an option, and there are no prior system restore points available.

Any help will be greatly appreciated as my wife would like to contact or be contacted by a couple of friends who use the service......and thanks in advance

Comments (Page 1)

yrag

on Sep 17, 2005

Look in Start/ Administrative Tools/ Event Viewer and see what errors it shows. If you see none, go to Control Panel/ System/ Advanced/ Settings, check 'Write an Event to System Log' and un-check 'Administrative Alert' and 'Automatically Restart'. Start Yahoo and see what the error is.

starkers

on Sep 17, 2005

Thanks, yrag, for your prompt response, it is appreciated.

I checked the event log and found this: Faulting application ypager exe, version 7.0.0.437, faulting module ntdll.dll version5.1.2600,2180, fault address 0x0018fea. An error report to MS came back with no known solutions at this time and provided a link to yahoo support...still waiting on a reply from them....won't hold my breath!

Although it appears that way, I doubt that 'ypager' is actually putting the system in safe mode without restarting after installation. I'm tending to feel now that it's more likely to be graphics related.....possibly? My graphics card is an ATI RadeOn 9550, 256mb with 6.14.10.2020 Catalyst drivers. My OS is XP Pro SP2, on 1.5gig RAM with P4 2.8 CPU. Don't know if any of this helps, given the relative newness of the issue, but here's hoping anyhow.

And thanks again for your time

yrag

on Sep 17, 2005

Do you have Zone Alarm w/ IMsecure installed?

yrag

on Sep 18, 2005

...talkin' to myself again...........

If you do have IMsecure, disable it during install. You MUST also kill the ypager process before un-installing/installing. If you want to go back to an older version: http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=yahoo

yrag

on Sep 18, 2005

....as long as I talking to myself...those ATI drivers are old...real old. That's the good news...the bad news is they're ME drivers.........

Fairyy~

on Sep 18, 2005

All I did was a custom uninstall...say yes to delete all...then go delete the messenger folder.

If you need a clean install i can send one to you.

Fairyy~

on Sep 18, 2005

Its a 6.0 version I have..and your not the only one that had this problem

starkers

on Sep 18, 2005

Sorry Yrag....been snooping around other places.

No, I don't have Zone Alarm or IMsecure...and the ypager was shutdown when uninstalling. At present its not present on my system, but will look into the link you provided to try an earlier version....thanks for that

As for the ATI drivers....pissed off about them being prehistoric and for ME. The update I quite recently requested was for XP....obviously I'm now off to ATI to renew them yet again. Is it possible the incorrect drivers may have been in part responsible for the display appearing as if in safe mode, if not wholly? Once I have replaced the drivers and reinstalled another version of messenger, I'll post again with the results.

Fairy~ thank you for your input here, it's appreciated. I did a clean/custom uninstall after the first (over the top update) messed up the display....still no joy with the reinstalls, though....even ran Ccleaner to remove any residual files. I've been reading various comments and forum threads over the net, and Yahoo Messenger 7 is not well liked at this point in time.....complaints coming out of the woodwork everywhere. Hopefully this info and the link will resolve the issue.

starkers

on Sep 18, 2005

Nope, no go...this time with yahoo messenger version 6.1922, did another custom uninstall to remove all components. Obviously there is an issue with the ypager software conflicting with something....but what?

The ATI drivers are now version 16.14.10.6497....supposedly the correct ones this time. When the clean install of the ypager earlier version completed, the screen briefly went black, came back on briefly and finally remained on with the safe mode appearance...however the computer did not reboot.

The system event log is as before, the earlier version number being the only difference. Back to the drawing board

Fairyy~

on Sep 18, 2005

.this time with yahoo messenger version 6.1922

Thats the last working version I had no problem with.

Fairyy~

on Sep 18, 2005

Fairy~ thank you for your input here, it's appreciated. I did a clean/custom uninstall after the first (over the top update) messed up the display....still no joy with the reinstalls, though....even ran Ccleaner to remove any residual files. I've been reading various comments and forum threads over the net, and Yahoo Messenger 7 is not well liked at this point in time.....complaints coming out of the woodwork everywhere. Hopefully this info and the link will resolve the issue.

Hope your able to find a solution. Yours seems to be a bit baffling. I hear lots of messenger complaints but havent seen your particular problem going into safe mode. Good luck..

yrag

on Sep 18, 2005

Hummm...this is persistent....I'm not whipped yet. I keep thinking something spanked your ntdll.dll file. You can (if you don't have an image backup) go into Safe Mode and delete your present ntdll file to a temp folder (or just rename it with the extension .old) and let Windows replace it with it's service backup (C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386) or download the dll file http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?ntdll and install it yourself. If it doesn't fix the problem or creates another problem, then just restore the file you saved to the temp folder or delete the new one and change the original back from .old to .dll. Barring any problems, I would stick with installing the 6.xxx version.

starkers

on Sep 18, 2005

yrag...thanks again for you help, did the dll thing but still no go. However, it's not a going into safe mode issue....in contol panel>display, the colour setting goes from 32bit highest down to an 8bit lowest setting when ypager is active and cannot be fully restored until ypager is removed. Normally, I don't have an 8bit setting, just 16 & 32 bit. Possibly it's an ATI graphic display driver issue....will reinstall those to see if it makes any difference and return with a progress report. Fingers crossed!

Still think we need a praying to the heavens emoticon here

yrag

on Sep 19, 2005

8-bit?......that's the MS VGA default (which means your graphics drivers are off loading). Where are you getting these drivers from? That one isn't correct either (although they should work). https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=293 Get them from there. This is beginning to sound like you don't have NET framework 1.1 installed or it's corrupted. That would explain why you're not having problems with other programs. Check out the 1.1 and get the new drivers.
http://www.drivercleaner.net/ Download and install this app. ........un-install the drivers in Add/Remove and boot into Safe mode and run drivercleaner to clean the ATI drivers completely, then install the new ones.(The graphic drivers can be installed in Safe mode to get a cleaner install)

starkers

on Sep 19, 2005

Bah humbug....still no go. Did the uninstall in safe mode and ran the driver cleaner as advised. Also uninstalled and reinstalled NET framework before attempting to reinstall ypager 6.1922 and the ATI drivers, version 162.0.0, according to the specs given in 'add remove', and were downloaded from the ATI home page as being Catalyst 5.8 for Windows XP.

After uninstalling the ATI drivers and rebooting, I got the found new hardware message and installed the drivers automatically using the Windows installer....all went well with ypager until I installed the ATI Catalyst 5.8 drivers, which resulted in the display going back to 8bits again and having to remove ypager again. I then did a system restore to before ypager 7 was installed, cleaned out the ATI drivers and reinstalled NET framework prior to reinstalling the drivers and ypager again....dagnammit, same result.

I'm at a total loss

I don't want to have to do a clean install of Windows again, so would it be benificial to uninstall the problematic programs and drivers before doing a repair instead? Cheers mate

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