Monday, June 18, 2007
Ad free Windows Live Messenger
It's actually very simple. Windows Live Messenger get's all it's ad information from a host called rad.msn.com (remote advertisement?) and since it's possible to tell Windows to look up invalid IP addresses through the host file, one can quickly get rid of the ads in Messenger.
You need administrative privileges for this, and if you are running Vista with UAC enabled you need to make sure you launch both Notepad.exe and Cmd.exe with elevation (Shift right-click them in the start-menu and choose run as administrator).
- First, find you host file, Microsoft Windows (NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista) is located in %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc by default.
- Second, open Notepad.exe as administrator (and with elevation if you use Vista and UAC) choose File > Open... and navigate to the host file (make sure you show all files) and open it. It's called "hosts" without a file extension.
- Now add the following new line at the end of the file: "0.0.0.0 rad.msn.com". Save the file and close Notepad.
It will tell Messenger to look up an invalid IP address for ads, and thus display no ads. You need to flush the DNS cache for this to take immediate effect, and it can be done by opening the command prompt Cmd.exe (as administrator) and type "ipconfig /flushdns". If you wait long enough Messenger should stop displaying ads but the quickest path to salvation is restarting Messenger as well.
Enjoy your Ad free Windows Live Messenger.
28 comments:
Q: Most of you guys probably have a router, just block rad.msn.com using an URL blocking filter.
A: An excellent suggestion. However, it might still not work. The approach described here will return a valid DNS query response but an invalid IP address and its the failiur to connect to that address which is making Messenger not display any ads.
A "URL blocking filter" would block the http request, it can be placed also on the some routers or more likely the proxy server.
Comms people prefer the proxy server.
Yes, and I didn’t said It wouldn't work (it might not work). This is however two technically very different things and I wouldn't recommend the latter. When the IP number is invalid within the OS the application is interrupted before creating that request. Thus less strain is put on your overall system.
What you’re doing is clogging your network with trash, and putting unnecessary load on your network router. Even if these performance implications are negligible, I consider this router stuff to be a lesser choice because it's not a preemptive solution, it’s just a system built around another to filter a certain behavior.
If you have no other choice, then by all means use a router, but if you can, use the host file to block hosts instead.
works great, thanks for the url to block whatever the method used
yea it works .. GREAT :D
Genius! Works a treat and involves no patching. Don't know hy I didn't think of doing that myself.
Thank you! This works perfectly.
You are my new god
You rock! This worked like a charm!
Great!!
it worked i think man, thank you very much. But a live messenger logo replace the ad, is normal?
@JCG - Yes, when MSN can't find any ads to display the logo is displayed instead.
Nice ! Thanks .
This method also works on Windows Live Messenger 2009.
Thanks!
This method works as long as the rad.msn.com host doesn't change. The blocking of that host at operating system level is not in any way tied to any specific MSN Messenger version, it will continue to work as long as MSN Messenger relies on ads retrived from rad.msn.com.
works for the bottom ad but the ads on left column still stands. thanks anyways.
It might take some time before you see the effect. I do not know what you mean by left ads still there, I no longer use Messenger and I'm not aware of any ad mechanism in Messenger other than rad.msn.com.
Ads on the left column, are you sure? i have never seen ads at the left, just at the bottom.
The ads you refer to in the left-hand column can be disabled in Messenger itself. Tools-options-tabs-hide tabs.
Thanks for this John! It would be great to get rid of this whole bar at the bottom where the ads were, but this is the next best thing.
It works, but now its crashes whenever the winks, emotions and background tabs are clicked
Of course it works ;) but I highly doubt that Messenger crashing has anything to do with the changes made to the hostfile. No IM or for that matter personal information (like winks and emoticons) is published through the rad.msn.com gateway. I recommend you try to reproduce this error on a different machine or re-install Messenger first. I've used this trick for many years and on many different machines without ever experiencing any problems.
Yay~ Thank u sooo much the ads were getting so annoying and now their gone (without patching too)!!! I love you, ur my hero! <3
Although the original post is 2-years old, this still works like a charm in the latest version of WLM and Windows 7.
Awesome, thanks.
This is awesome!
It worked for Windows Live Messenger
How to remove Windows Live Messenger Ads Banners
Thanks a lot for this workaround.
Really appreciate
Awesome. Was sceptical if this ad removal fix would work as POST is quite old.
Pleasantly surprised that it does still work. Thank you for this little Gem of info :)
The Internet pretty much works in the same way today as it did 20 years ago. And people constantly leave comments on this page that it's still a reliable fix.
Thank you for that cos those ads on windows live messenger were really starting to piss me off
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