Taskbar freezes after signing in to MSN **Solved**

I'm using XP Pro SP1 with MSN Messenger 6.1.

For the past 2 days, I cannot use my Messenger at all because the Messenger as well as the taskbar will totally stop responding after signing in. This is what will happen after a sign-in:

• The taskbar loses all its functionality. Mouse over it becomes hourglass.
• The desktop will still respond to left and right mouse clicks, but trying to launch anything there would freeze up the whole thing.
• Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del takes me to list of choices like shutdown, log off, task list, etc., but clicking on any of them is useless (yep, system freezes).
• And no, the hard disk is not busy reading.

So, the mouse still moves and numlock still responds, but eventually, the only way out is the reset button. I could not even bring up the task list to see what's going on.

After some fiddling, I found out that I'd be able to use the Messenger if I uninstalled the antivirus software (I tried NAV, McAfee and now avast, all same). So could this be a virus or something?

Please help. Thx.

 

Have you tried uninstalling all instances of MSN Messenger including the one bundled with XP ? If not I would give that a try. Here is how to uninstall the bundled version : http://tweakxp.com/tweak2089.aspx . The newest one is removable through add/remove programs. The reason I ask this is because the install of the new MSN Messenger could have caused a conflict when it was installed. After you have removed the instances of the messenger reboot your computer and then reinstall the version of MSN Messenger you like the most.

 

Disable SSDP Discovery Service.

start-run.

type:

services.msc

click OK.

find SSDP Discovery Service.

Double click it. Set startup type to disabled.

Now stop it.

Does that help?

 

Kaotic:
Actually I've had 2 messengers running for quite a while already (since v6.0) without any problems, and this just happened about 2 days ago. But I will definitely give it a try and let you know how it goes. Thanks.

Adrynalyne:
Nope. That didn't help.

One more piece of information though. The last thing I did before this happened was LiveUpdating all my NAV components (the first time I ever used LiveUpdate), if that was of any relevance.

Any clues?

 

the Liveupdate was a clue, yes.

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...88256e150063e3be?OpenDocument&src=bar_sch_nam

 

Well...I did an un/reinstall like Kaotic said, then followed Adrynalyne's link to update some certificate. Don't know which one did it, but now everything seems to be back to normal.

Thanks guys, I really missed my MSN chats.

 

Sweet! Glad everything worked out. It is always nice to knock that bug of your back hehe.