Messenger and the Windows Essentials installers removed from Microsoft servers

At what is no surprise to anyone, the Windows Essentials have disappeared from the Microsoft servers.

I did prepare for this situation for Reviver use and the Essentials installer files have been saved.  However, this does mean that installing Messenger for the time being will now be a larger download at 100MB.

Additionally, not all the languages will be available for the next few hours, if there is one you are in need of right now, please let me know in the comments and I’ll move it up in queue. All languages are now available. 

Messenger and Microsoft accounts down for some users today (error code 81000395)

This afternoon Microsoft account based services like Messenger, Skype, Xbox, Outlook.com and others are experiencing intermittent issues. 

In Messenger you’ll get error code 81000395 when you try to sign in. Additionally when you do sign in, contact lists may be incomplete.

Just keep trying and it should eventually allow you to sign in. 

You can also check the Skype heartbeat and Office.com/Office 365 status pages. 

Too many messaging systems?

In the heyday of Messenger’s popularity, I had very little reason to use any of the other instant messaging services on a regular basis, because (almost) everyone used Messenger!

However, today’s XKCD comic expresses my current situation perfectly:

To further explain, here’s a screenshot of the messaging section of my taskbar.

There’s at least nine applications for instant messaging, not counting that some connect to more than one chat service.  Within each application, I tend to have a completely different group of contacts, and some are used more so for audio, group, or exclusively text communication.

Although over time I’ve become more accustomed to knowing which contact is trying to talk to me on which application, and the required CPU and memory usage for each application hasn’t been too noticeable in general usage, searching for information can be quite difficult as the message history for each contact usually can only be searched within the application or service itself (or virtually not at all, Google Hangouts).

Recently Microsoft has shown that they are working on a feature (called My People) for Windows 10 that would pin contacts to the taskbar instead of individual applications.  The feature has been delayed and may not work with existing desktop applications (which should be the subject of another article), so this may or may not help the situation.

Messenger on its own originally supported both the .NET Messenger Service/Windows Live and AOL Instant Messenger, and you can still see the basis of this if you hover over a contact in Messenger 2012 (look for the Networks: heading).

Additionally, Messenger originally supported a full API back in the 90s to allow others applications to fully communicate through Messenger without evening opening the program.  This was quickly abused and scaled back slightly but the API is still usable and was made use of in tools like Messenger Plus!, Outlook, Outlook Express and others.  Almost no instant messaging applications support this level of control now.

I’m curious how many messaging applications others use, so I’ve made a poll on the forum where you can indicate which applications you actively use on your PC.