Microsoft admits in its Newsgroup that DirectX 9 might cause Windows Messenger not to work properly on some setups. They also mentioned that this is being looked into and promising a solution to this issue soon. Qba73 were able to provide us with a quote from Jonathan Kay, Windows MVP:

“It’s being looked into — hopefully a solution will be available soon. In the meantime, I don’t believe any games exclusively require DirectX 9 to be installed (considering it was just released) — you can easily use System Restore to restore back to before you installed it (Start, Help & Support, ‘Undo changes to my computer using System Restore’) and Windows Messenger should once again work properly.”

[Source: Neowin]

MSN Messenger 5 Build 5.0.537 has been leaked, we are not yet certain this will be the final release.

This version is 10 builds ahead of the last known leak and so far has not been officially released by Microsoft. It is currently on their servers however and as the release date for MSN 8 and MSN messenger 5 are only a few days away this will most likely be the release build.

This version connects faster than the 4.7 builds currently supported by Microsoft as well as being able to send files out beyond a router without doing manual configuration of ports.

Download [Source: ieXbeta]

Build 4.7.0104 of Windows Messenger for Windows XP is now available for download

Instant Messenger Spellchecker 1.24

Instant Messenger Spellchecker is an ease-to-use application that adds spell-checking functionality to your favorite Instant Messenger. It supports most popular Instant Messengers including MSN Messenger, Windows XP Messenger, Odigo, ICQ, Miranda ICQ and others. The program automatically checks the spelling of your message when you click “Send” button, but before the message is actually sent. Additional features include online dictionary updates, transparency support and more. Supports 10 languages, US English, UK English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Dutch and Latin.

Note: Spellchecker is shareware which means after a 20 day trial you have to register the program to keep on using it. More information is available at Spellchecker’s homepage

Download
Screenshot

For those of you that are having problems shutting down MSN Messenger and are running Norton AntiVirus 2003, make sure you disable Norton first. It’s prevents you from closing Messenger due to Norton’s plugin that scans incoming file transfers for viruses. Or alternatively, you can close Messenger from the task manager.