Windows Live Messenger - Malformed Packets

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Guest

I have traced a recurring network outage at work to Windows Live Messenger on
my machine.

A few days ago people started reporting no internet connectivity. Our
current network configuration has about 20 users with access through a
TimeWarner high speed connection.

Regardless of the amount of network traffic, users were reporting no
connectivity. I could restore service by power cycling the TimeWarner
connection. I had Time Warner out to test and replace the modem.

***Lot's of other troublehooting that I won't get into here as it was
irrelivant...

....then

I ran a packet sniffer on the connection between the switch and the firewall
which would show all internet traffic.

One IP address reporting malformed packets around the time of the connection
loss. I checked the DHCP leases... it was the IP address of my machine.

I verified that this issue only occurred when my machine was on the network.

I installed and ran a packet sniffer on my machine logged in as admin... the
internet connection stayed healthy. I reviewed what would be different
between admin account and my user account. Might be messenger.

I logged into Windows Live Messenger.

I watched the packet sniffer collect data and realized the IP address that
Windows Messenger was communicating with was familiar from the previous
analysis which showed malformed packets. I watched and waited.

I started seeing malformed packets appear on in the Windows Live Messenger
communication packets.

Within a few seconds, the continuous ping to google.com from another machine
began failing indefinately.

I power cycled the modem again and closed Windows Live Messenger. All is
well.

However I would like to be able to use messenger.

Any insight would be greatly aprreciated.

Thanks!
 
you can use yahoo messenger instead i found i couldnt get into windows
messenger so i go through yahoo now no problem
 
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