Tech question

[houseelf]

Why does my computer freeze everytime I receive an instant message? How can I fix this?

Kelly

[lastdefence]

Re: Tech question

Is it an instant message on MSN, or something else?
I have a few ideas... you could have too many programs running in the background, using a lot of your RAM, so that maybe when a message arrives it is just too much for the computer to handle. If you're on a PC you can hit CTRL+ALT+DEL and have a look at the processes running through the task manager. You can generally google any processes you don't recognize to see if you can stop them or not. If you have a lot of programs that run as soon as you start your computer, you should consider changing that so that you open them when you need them instead of having them start up every time.

It could also be that there is something wrong with your IM program and it's time for an upgrage. I believe you should be able to uninstall and reinstall the program and still keep all your contacts (I think MSN handles all that on their end of things so even if you delete it off your computer, when you log in again with your username and password, they have all your contacts saved). Just make sure that you have saved/moved any received files from contacts since you might lose those folders if you uninstall.

If it's still freezing, this won't fix the problem but it might help you out temporarily. Meebo.com allows you to log in to several different IM programs and it runs your messenger through the browser. So it loads your MSN contact list in a window and you can send and receive messages like normal, only it's in a browser and not running as a separate program. Quite handy to use on computers where you don't have permission to install programs.

Good luck!