India Broadband Forum

saurav_k

instructions for removal of advertisements from msn and yahoo messengers:

for yahoo messenger:

Yahoo! IM no longer uses 'YUrl', but uses 'View' instead. You gotta click on each key inside of 'View' and edit the 'banner url' string to anything you want... I simply cleared mine out completely and it works flawlessly!

Here is what you gotta do:

Run regedit
Goto HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Yahoo -> Pager -> View

Inside the 'View' key there are a several other keys... go through each one and edit the 'banner url' string to your liking. It even works if the string is left blank (this causes it to look as if ads were never even implemented)!

Restart Yahoo! IM for the effect to take hold.

This is great for Yahoo! IM 5.6 users who don't want to be bothered with ads.

for msn messenger:

To edit the msnmsgr.exe file, you'll need a HEX editor. I found the freeware Hex Editor XVI32 perfectly suited for this task. There is no installation, just download the file, create a folder on your hard drive, unzip the XVI32.zip file there, and run the XVI32.exe file.

Note: this is for the latest version of 6.2, 6.2.0137. You can check your version, by choosing Help > About MSN Messenger from the programs menu.

When you have the HEX editor running, follow these steps:

Make sure you are not running messenger. Right-click its icon in the system tray, and from the menu select Exit
Now you'll need to locate the messenger executable msnmsgr.exe, it will normally be in \Program Files\MSN Messenger\
Make a backup of the file. Right-click msnmsgr.exe and from the menu choose Copy. Now right-click on an empty area in the same folder, and select Paste from the menu. The backup will be named Copy of msnmsgr.exe. If you ever want to get back to the original file, simply delete msnmsgr.exe, and then rename Copy of msnmsgr.exe to msnmsgr.exe
From the menu in XVI32, choose File > Open, locate msnmsgr.exe, and open it
From the menu, select Address > Goto, select hexadecimal, and enter E5E61, press OK
The value selected will be 74, simply type EB to replace it (so 74 becomes EB)
When done select File > Save from the menu, and exit XVI32
Reopen Messenger 6.2, now without the ads!
Also, you might want to get rid of the annoying tabs shown at the left side of your contact list. There is an option for that, but some people might not find it easy to locate:

In MSN Messenger, select Options... from the Tools menu
Select the Privacy tab
Check the box before This is a shared computer so don't display my tabs
Pressing OK and doing a sign-out and sign-in will remove the tabs forever!
You'll now have a much cleaner version of Messenger, which (to my personal taste) is a lot more userfriendly.
This method (in contrast to other suggested schemes) does not only remove the ad, but also removes its designated space, so the Messenger window will be smaller.

cool_techie_tvm

Does the procedure listed for yahoo messenger work for v9 ? I find that none of the procedures listed online for v9 is working. Yes some are working, but it will block access to the chatrooms.

saurav_k

not quite sure about it buddy ... actually i always use the older versions of messengers ... and many ppl still prefer those older versions ...

cool_techie_tvm

Are the older versions compatible with the newer captcha enabled chatrooms? I havent used any older versions hence this query.

saurav_k

i am not quite sure about this ... for chatting in yahoo chat rooms i use third party clients like yazak and ychat ... there are many of them but yazak is still the best ...

cool_techie_tvm

Thanks indeed for the information about yazak and ychat. Didnt knew those existed. That should revup my yahoo chatroom experiences.

saurav_k

refer here ... Yahoo! Chat Clients: Beat the Boot Codes for different yahoo clients ... yazak is the best of the lot .... and really makes u unbootable ... ychat is gr8 for grabbing mikes ...