Installing Windows Live Mesh 2011 with Windows Essentials 2012
Yesterday Microsoft released Windows Essentials 2012 which among other things, removes Windows Live Mesh for SkyDrive (which is barely a comparable product). But unlike the 2011 and 2009 versions of the Essentials, thankfully you can actually install Live Mesh on your existing 2012 installation.
To make this easy, I’ve written a small tool called Live Mesh Installer.
Getting started with Live Mesh Installer
To get started, download the Live Mesh Installer, choose Run if possible or download and open the zip file yourself. Next, just run the LiveMeshInstaller.exe inside the zip file and choose Yes when prompted for administrator rights.
Finally choose the language version you prefer from the list and then select the Begin button. The Installer will then download the Windows Live Essentials 2011 web installer and automatically install Windows Live Mesh. Please note that installation will take some time as it will need to download, extract and install Live Mesh. When it is complete, Live Mesh will start automatically.
Options
If you prefer to see what’s happening with the installation, uncheck the ‘Hide installation wizard’ option before you begin. When the Windows Live Essentials setup begins, you will be prompted to either install all the products or choose the ones you prefer. Only Live Mesh will be installed on either option (unless you choose others specifically in the choose screen).
Final notes
Unfortunately as Windows Essentials 2012 is hardcoded to remove Live Mesh, any upgrades or changes you make to your Windows Essentials 2012 installation will result in Live Mesh being removed again. If this happens, just re-run the tool and install it again. Hopefully this won’t happen too often.
Version history
09/01/2012 1.1.1.0 Fixed Italian not showing in the list
08/19/2012 1.1.0.0 Added the remaining languages
08/08/2012 1.0.0.0 First release of Live Mesh Installer
Posted on August 9, 2012, in Messenger, Messenger Tools, Tools. Bookmark the permalink. 28 Comments.
Jonathan Kay, MessengerGeek 
What is the exact reason they dropped Live Mesh from their Essentials 2012 pack? Is Microsoft going to abandon Live Mesh/Skydrive?
Thanks for the useful tool!
Greetings breezie. The exact reason? I doubt we’ll ever truly know and given prior experience, even an official reason wouldn’t be accurate.
But I’m fairly confident that it’s just the normal case of dropping functionality that “no one uses”. Not only does Live Mesh have a software cost (that is, the Microsoft so-called “support cost”, which is a hilarity all its own) but the required backend server infrastructure does too. I thoroughly expect the 2011 version will cease functioning at some point in the next five years or so, just by the server-side of things being taken offline. I could be wrong though.
Certainly the push in all the upcoming Microsoft to get everyone to use SkyDrive over their own local storage seems evidence enough that they’re not invested in the idea of local synchronization or any of the other functions of Mesh.
It works! Great program 😀 Can you add polish language to the list of languages in this tool?
Greetings hago. I’ve added Polish and the remaining missing languages now.
Thank you for this great tool. Much appreciated. Lets hope skydrive get windows live mesh features.
Thank you for making this tool. Very useful, as is the background information you’ve given.
With any luck, Microsoft will provide a way of synchronising the desktop using Skydive, which seems to be missing just now.
Hey Jonathan, can you add Italian to the list of languages? Thank you! 🙂
Hey Ugo. Sorry about that, it should be there now. Italian was always in the code too, it just wasn’t shown on the list (my fault). I thought I had double-checked I had them all, but apparently I missed that. Triple-checked now!
Oh, I understand! Thanks again! 😉
This worked like a charm and was very generous of you to do. I use Mesh for school to keep my class notes synced across multiple machines. Mid-semester is NOT the time to search for a replacement. Dropbox and MS Office don’t play nearly as well together as the Mesh service does. Cheers!
How do i use the live mesh installer with the redist windows live 2011 setup file (wlsetup-all 15.4.3555.308.exe 214mb)? I have to install in many systems and would prefer not to download again and again.
How do i use the live mesh installer with the redist windows live 2011 setup file (wlsetup-all 15.4.3555.308.exe 214mb)? I have to install in many systems and would prefer not to download again and again.
I’m getting an error with the 2011 install while running this process that the Spam Filter (SpamFilterData.msi) fails to install and rolls back the mesh install. Do you have any insite?
I was able to get around this issue by running the packages individually, skipping the SpamFilterData and all Messenger Companion packages.
I came’d.
Thanks bro!
Oh and I was wondering, you think you could make an offline version in the near future?
The local name of “Chinese (Traditional)” should be “中文 (繁體), instead of 中文 (簡體).
great, think you very much, good job !
Hi Jonathan… awesome idea to get around what seems to be a blunder by MS. If you have the time could you try this on Windows 8 Pro With Live 2012. I tried your utility and toward the end of the installation I get an error “cannot rename the C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Windows Live\.cache” . Any ideas?
Hi,
I have WL Essentials 2012 and Live Mesh installed using the installer you made available. Most of the time things work as they should, but…
Lately I’ve been getting failures of the Windows Live Communications Platform. The error message shows the program at fault is “WLCommZombieV1”. Now I know that ‘WLComm’ is need for Essentials 2012, however, is ‘WLCommZombieV1’ part of your install for Live Mesh?
I have the Live Essentials 2012/Live Mesh combo installed on two computers. I’ve had most of my problems with my laptop installation, but have had this occur on the desktop as well.
Or… Is there possible something else going on here and could you suggest a course of investigation?
Greetings Pete,
Although I would love to make something with the word zombie in it sometime, my installer uses the real Microsoft installer, so no, it has nothing to do with me directly.
This is just WLComm and although I don’t have the source, I would assume this is a zombie watchdog which is probably used to check to see if WLComm is actually dead or not and attempt to restart it.
You might get a bit more info by doing Start, typing view all problem reports, choose the item that appears, then hunt down WLComm (probably under Windows Live Communications… related items) and double-click some to see the technical details. The problem signature may reveal at least some direction on what’s going on.
Another place you might look for more details is in the Event Viewer.
As a random guess at what might help some of the problem, you might have luck removing your dedicated contacts cache store if you haven’t done so already since this is WLComm’s primary existence and it will simply pull the contacts back down from the server. To do that, press Win-R to bring up the run dialog, punch in %appdata%\..\local\microsoft\windows live\ and click OK. Then just delete the Contacts folder.
thank you, work with Windows 8
hey i just suggest if you want live essential 2012 then use it fully if you not then there always an option not to install itt and use previous version cheers ^_^
dios te bendiga, god bless you!
thank you so much! :)))
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