Msn display pic/transfer speed

After asking msn help, who were hopeless, i've came here.

Has anyone experienced a problem with msn 7.5 where they cannot view their contacts display pics? and yes I have checked in the options tab to make sure that i'm allowing them to be viewed.

I also used to get a very fast transfer rate with msn 6.2, which was better, but now it's non-existent. Is there a way I can just still use 6.2? when i try, it tells me to download 7.5.

I run ZA, is there anything in there that might hinder it?

thanks for any help

 

I figure that the display picture problem may be related to Zone Alarm.
Shut down ZA entirely and then restart Messenger. Then you have to ensure that ZA doesn't load during Windows startup. Do this by going to ZA Overview > Preferences tab. Uncheck 'Load Zone Alarm at startup'.
After rebooting, make sure you are signed in to Messenger first, then start ZA.
Let me know if this resolves the problem!

With regards to the transfer rate, I think that what happens is when you try to send a file, your pcs try to directly communicate and set up ports for a transfer. If one or both of the firewalls/routers does not have NAT set up properly or has upnp disabled and hasnt set up port forwarding, then the attempt will fail so MSN will attempt the file transfer via the MSN server, which is bandwidth limited to 128k (ie about 10kb/s). However since many people seem to have poorly configured firewalls/routers i am guessing this MSN server is put under heavy load, which is why transfer speed are even slower. You might have a perfectly set up firewall but if your friend doesnt, sadly it is doomed to not work.

Look into your firewall/router and ensure either UPNP is enabled or ports for file transfer are forwarded if UPNP is disabled - also check the other person has done this. Your firewall/router may not support upnp so you may have no choice but to forward ports.
Or, Consider using an FTP storage site somewhere and sending them a link to your uploaded file as this may be faster.

Regards......