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PROBLEM
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I had problems with running games within MSN Messenger for
more than 5 weeks
and the suggestions on this forum did not help me at all.
My problem was that
the "Launch Site" or "Fun & games" menu always showed the
message
'Fun & Games is temporarily unavailabe. Please close and
try again later.'
Checking 'Always ask for my password...' and emtying
Internet Explorer's cache
simply did not do the trick.
A post on this forum from Heric a few days ago got me on
the right track however.
His solution of changing timezone information for my
passport did not solve this
although my settings were admittely absurd (country and
timezone did not fit
together). Neither did the games.mess.be solution work on
it's own although
I got it to work in conjunction with the solution provided
below.
Following is a description of what I have found out about
this problem and the
solution that worked for me. If you have this same
problem and don't care about
the details then skip this part and go straight to the
soulution part below.
MSN Messenger has two settings that both contain urls of
web services that are
used to play the games. The first is AppDirPageURL and is
used to identify the
source for the menu that is shown when you click
on "Launch Site" or "Fun & games"
buttons. The second is AppDirSeviceURL which points to
the service used when
playing games after selecting a game from the menu.
Both these settings on my computer pointed to services
that simply did not work
for me. I don't know the value of my non-working
AppDirPageURL setting but a
working setting (which can be opened in a web browser) has
been posted on this
forum by Jonathan Kay as
http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/
Directory.aspx?lang=en-us
This displayed a menu but did not solve my problem as the
AppDirSeviceURL setting
was still pointing to a service that did not work for me.
The non-working setting my computer was using for
AppDirSeviceURL is
http://config.messenger.msn.com/Config/MsgrConfig.a
smx
but a working one is
http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/
AppDirectory.asmx
I don't know of a way to change edit those settings
directly for MSN Messenger
and the way I found includes patching the Messenger
program which almost
certainly violates the MS end-user-licence-agreement for
MSN Messenger.
So be warned.
The patch can be found at
http://www.msnfanatic.com/tabserv/
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SOLUTION
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1.
Download and run the patch from the following webpage
http://www.msnfanatic.com/tabserv/
A direct link to the patch is
http://www.msnfanatic.com/tabserv/TabServ%20Patch.exe
2.
Type in your passport and click the patch button.
Note that you have to completely exit the MSN Messenger
program before
applying the patch.
3.
Go back to the webpage mentioned above (where you
downloaded the patch from)
and Register using you .net passport. Note that it is not
required nor
recommended that you use the same password for this
registration as with
your passport.
4.
Set the two settings ('App Directory Page' and 'App
Directory Service') to
the default values of
http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/
Directory.aspx?L=en-US
and
http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/
AppDirectory.asmx
respectively.
You can use the 'Default' link to the right of each
setting and then you have to
submit each of these changes.
5.
Restart MSN Messenger and it should work!
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NOTE
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Hope this also helps others who have had the same problem.
And maybe it also helps Jonathan Kay to provide a non-eula-
breaking solution :)
Regards,
Haukur