There’s a nagging security feature in Windows Live Messenger file transfer. Let’s say a friend of mine, John Doe transferred a 15MB MP3 file to me. Once it has completed transferring, it will say “You have successfully received C:\music.mp3 from John Doe“. The filename will look like a hyperlink because it is underlined in blue color. By logic we should be able to click on the hyperlink and it should open the music.mp3
Windows found that this file is potentially harmful. To help protect your computer, Windows has blocked access to this file

But then after clicking the hyperlink, a message saying “Windows found that this file is potentially harmful. To help protect your computer, Windows has blocked access to this file” will appear.
Windows found that this file is potentially harmful. To help protect your computer, Windows has blocked access to this file

Well, you might think that it might be Windows Live Messenger security features that prevented the mp3 from being executed. I manually looked for the mp3 file and it wasn’t in “My Received Files” folder. I did a complete search but also couldn’t find the MP3 which I just received. Looks like the MP3 file has been automatically deleted!

I was really mad when Windows automatically deleted the file that I just received. Now Windows Live Messenger has really made me mad and I am going to find a way to disable Windows from automatically deleting my files when I click on a “potentially harmful” file.

By default, Windows will delete any of the files with an extension listed below once you click on the hyperlink in Windows Live Messenger.


Older versions of MSN Messenger can be easily fixed by using A-Patch “Remove File Transfer Protection” fix but for Windows Live Messenger, you need to edit your registry. I wouldn’t advice a computer newbie to manually adding new registry entries because it involves quite a bit of steps which can cause problems on your computer if you do it wrongly. The easy way is to download a registry file and run it. It will automatically import the settings to your registry.

Thanks to Petri for figuring out this solution!

[ Download Windows Live Messenger File Transfer Protection Fix ]

[tags]Windows Live Messenger, MSN, WLM, File Transfer[/tags]