Recently you replied to my question concerning a blinking hour glass cursor appearing on the screen. As you suggested, Windows Messenger seemed to be causing the problem as closing this program ceases the problem. I have also found that if I untick the option “Allow Windows Messenger to run in the background” the problem no longer occurs, presumably because Windows Messenger is no longer running in this case. I am currently using Windows Live Messenger for instant messaging, so can you advise why I need Windows Messenger as well?

To set the scene, on your computer it seems the version of Windows Messenger which originally ships with Windows XP is still installed, in addition to the newly downloaded and installed version of Windows Live Messenger. Windows Live Messenger is a more up-to-date version of the Messenger software, so you should not need to have both the original version and this more updated version installed at the same time. Furthermore, since the original version of Windows Messenger seems to be causing problems, this provides us with even more incentive to remove this program. Removing the original Windows Messenger from the computer can be a tricky task and usually requires the usage of a specific command. However, I have never uninstalled Windows Messenger from a computer while another version of the software (in this case, Windows Live Messenger) is still installed. In this situation the concern being that uninstalling Windows Messenger may result in critical shared components (common to both Windows Messenger and Windows Live Messenger) being removed, thus causing Windows Live Messenger to no longer function correctly. So, you should be prepared for the situation where you may also need to uninstall and then reinstall Windows Live Messenger. Therefore, you should take a backup of any important data contained in your current Windows Live Messenger installation before continuing. This may include writing down the contact details of people in your friends list so they can be re-added in case the information is lost.

To proceed with the uninstallation of Windows Messenger, make sure that both Windows Messenger and Windows Live Messenger are closed. You may need to right-click on the relevant icons in the system tray and click “Exit”. Then, go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type the following command:
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%infmsmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove
Click OK to execute the command, and some status windows will appear on the screen notifying you that Windows Messenger has been successfully uninstalled. Restart the computer, and then check whether Windows Live Messenger still works correctly. Assuming all looks good, check whether the blinking cursor problem has also been resolved. If so, it seems that the problems have been fixed.

However, if Windows Live Messenger no longer works correctly it seems that you will need to uninstall and then reinstall Windows Live Messenger, most likely because uninstalling the original Windows Messenger resulted in a critical shared component (required by Windows Live Messenger) being removed. To uninstall Windows Live Messenger, go to the “Start” menu > “Control Panel” and open the “Add or Remove Programs” control panel. Uninstall Windows Live Messenger and then restart the computer. Once the computer has restarted, download and install the latest version of Windows Live Messenger from: get.live.com/messenger/overview. Once installed, the program should work correctly.