Carry on using MSN 7.5 after a forced upgrade
Sep 16, 2007 Tech
So the other day I went to login to msn (using version 7.5) and it asked me to upgrade before i could login. So either I upgrade or dont login, nice.
Ive never really liked the WLM Versions really. mostly because MsgPlus! has removed a much used feature from the newer version of the app which is compatible with the newer versions of WLM. I would use WLM if Plus! added this feature back in. although I believe it was removed because WLM aoffered the function in itself anyway. (which isnt exactly true but still)
Anyways, on to the good stuff…
To carry on using MSN 7.5 or any other version that requires you to upgrade before logging in.
Close MSN down from the tray so its not running at all.
Open Reshacker and open msnmsgr.exe from the MSN Folder in program files.
Click the + next to “Version info”, then click the + next to “1″ and finally click “1033″.
On the left hand side you will see version information for the file.
replace the line that says
VALUE “FileVersion”, “[your file version]“
with
VALUE “FileVersion”, “8.5.0324″
[your file version] will be the version of msn your currently have and want to carry on using.
also replace this line
VALUE “ProductVersion”, “[your file version]“
with
VALUE “ProductVersion”, “8.5.0324″
again, [your file version] will be whatever your msn version is.
Once you’ve done that click “compile script” and then click “file” > “Save as” and save it over the original msn executable.
This will fool the msn servers into thinking that your version of msn is the “latest and greatest” WLM version.
Start MSN again and login as normal, and you should have no problems.
Mess.be suggests you could use a HEX editor to do this too, but I think this way is easier myself.
Just make sure you dont accept any webcam requests from people you dont know, as this is why the upgrade was forced, there was an explit while allowed remote code execution and injection. Since your still using the same version the exploit is not patched, but if your smart enough to reshack your own msn executable I think it would be safe to say you would do this by default anyway.
An alternative method would be to download the newly released MSN version 7.0 (which includes the webcam exploit patched) and run it in win2000 compatibility mode, while this is a lot easier than hacking your current version with reshacker, it is a step down from MSN 7.5.
Enjoy! 
Tags: forced upgrade, msn, upgrade, wlm
A little WLM / Hotmail trick
Jul 4, 2006 Tech
Well I worked out a nice little trick to get a nice clean WLMail / Hotmail interface (aka without ads or ugly “action cancelled” / ad frame page time outs)
this tweak / hack was “designed for” & tested in IE, so im not sure if it’ll work in other browsers.
Here’s what my layout looks like atm (yeah, I never liked that reading pane 
)
ok, here’s how to do it..
add the following line to your hosts file:
-
127.0.0.1 rad.msn.com
(make sure there’s a space between the two)
This will effectively make the ads for WLMail / Hotmail timeout
You could leave it at this but you will get an ugly box at the top with an action cancelled message in it each time you load the page up, if you want to get rid of that too, follow these steps:
-
open C:\Windows\system32\shdoclc.dll in Reshacker
- open “2110″ and look for the resource “NAVCANCL.HTM”.
once you open that you’ll see the html code for the “Action Cancelled” page you get in IE
now if you know html well enough you could design your own page (but do remember it will show up in frames that timeout too so it wont always look good if you design a full page). otherwise you ca just create a blank page.
now just to be safe, instead of deleting everything that’s in there you can just “comment out” the existing html, this allows you to put back the original page if you decide you want it back.
to comment out the existing html, find this line:
-
and change to this: (remove the spacing between the < & the !)
< !--finally, find this line:
and change it to this:
-->
-
compile the script, save the file, and replace the original with the modified file using Replacer
yes thats it
Note: if you use the classic hotmail layout, (e.g. your not in the beta) then change your background colour to that of the header colour (yes, that shade of blue) you shouldnt see a white box (or two) then.
Note 1.5: this does mean you will get a blank page when a site times out, so just be wary of that
Note two: This also blanks out that little box ad below your folders list.
Note three: this was originally done to stop those annoying JavaScript errors I was getting from the ads in msn, it really annoyed the hell out of me getting an error whenever I opened the main contacts window, so I fixed it, and only recently thought about editing the system file to get rid of the ugly “action cancelled message”.
Note four: I am not responsible if you mess your machine up, do it at your own risk.
Note five: im sure there was something else I was going to say, I just forgot, dammit.
Enjoy!
(and yes, I know I changed back to my old theme, the CSS was doing my head in.)