Installing Windows Live Essentials

Considering its history, at this point it might as well be called "Windows Undead", as it keeps going away and then being brought back.

I don't like the Live Essentials because it adds several processes running in the background at all times. Not all of us have 16 GB of ram...lol.

Because they tend to stuff it up badly in the first place.

Microsoft are only at their best when they are behind others in technology and ideas. Its a good thing they have deep pockets.

Windows Zombie Essentials...

Them and Vampires....flavour of the 'month' ...;)

MS at their best* == fierce, dogged, almost religious tenacity where being 2nd to the market is often a good thing.

MS at their worst* == hesitant, unsure, perfunctory.

*From company success point of view.

I feel sorry for ye olde Microsoft; every major concept they've had apart from Xbox and Windows has been a rather spectactular failure. Their Online Music Service, the Zune, Games for Windows Live, etc.  I guess when you've got the second best console on the market and have been the market leader in operating systems for the PC for so long, that throwing around a few billion on bad ideas isn't a big deal...

I love windows Live (MSN), the only messaging app that lets u add custom emotes, a must for me.

The rest of the 'Essentials' they can keep

I recently ditched my Live account and removed everything else Microsoft Live, off my PC's, after my Live email account was hacked. I had a very strong password...........So cannot understand how it happened...........Until I read of quite a few similar stories around! Can you imagine my embarrassment when serious business aquaintances and friends started contacting me to say that they had received my email and thanked me for the 'pointer 'towards the so called 'wonder drug'..........however they would decline on this occassion as they were quite happy with the size of their 'manhood' !!!!!!  

Microsoft don't want to know!..............so they can 'poke' Live where the sun don't shine!

LOL anyone still uses Live Essentials??

I use the Family Safety app for the kids PC. Being able to access the reports from any PC is great. I also use messenger and Live Writer.

I had the same issue and a very strong password as well. I ended up creating as new live.com account and I'm just letting my ancient hotmail.com account go. I have to believe that either someone at MS sold the info or there's a hole in their system they haven't yet IDed

I use Photo Gallery and Mail.  Don't care about the rest.

Weird, my hotmail account got hacked too, about 2 months ago, and I've been using it for.....christ, almost 14 years and it's never been compromised. I got seriously paranoid when that happened. So I scrubbed it and moved to gmail.

How do you know and how was it hacked? Someone could login and send emails like if they were you?

This is the first time I can honestly say that Microsoft have let me down..........and I won't ever trust Live email or anything else Live until they start coming up with answers......The net is full of stories like mine..........BEWARE!

That someone would have needed your password.....Yes?..............I took every precaution and still got compromised

I knew I'd been hacked because contacts began sending me emails saying "WTF is this?" The emails had the flavor of a bot network. How it happened, either through my system or through Live, I couldn't find out.

Yes, and register on websites too. My wife got casino spam on her account that came from mine. I also rec'd a "confirmation" of registration with Kohl's Department store which I did not sign up for.

Considering any open wifi you find has the potential to be used for data mining I would wonder if that's what happened.

Nope, not in my case...........My laptop had never left my home and I had never accessed my live account from a public computer or on a public wifi system..........or anywhere else for that matter...........Purely from home on a totally secure network...........That's why I am totally convinced that this is an issue that Microsoft should be doing something proactive about but are just 'brushing it under the carpet'. I've had a Yahoo! email account for 10 years and never had a problem. Just google the issue and you'll see all the concerns raised by hotmail and live account holders. I wouldn't be so pissed off if I thought I'd been foolish and compromised myself by downloading some piece of viral junk or something equally stupid.......but I have'nt. Here's another interesting part to this saga........the bastard who got access to my account 'mined' all repeat all my address book..............I have never sent an email to all recipients in my address book, ever, period..........so the 'focker' who got all the contacts in my address book got them by accessing my actual account and no other way..........Back to trusty Yahoo!  

I've used hotmail since 97...havent had a problem.

Simply put, I do not believe you nor disbelieve you, not enough information.

My laptop came with WLE already installed. Got a recent upgrade too. Never had a problem with it. But check this out. Last night I disabled AVG to run Malwarebytes. Within ten seconds it identified 11 infected files. At the end of the scan there were 61 infected files and two Trojans. Every single one came from My Websearch. Where that came from I don't know. I also found Chrome installed on my machine and I did not do the install. The two Trojans were named Vorundu and they along with the other crap were associated with Internet Explorer. I used IE that time when we were having that to do with Google and Firefox. Now I have AVG covering that end too whereas before it wasn't. Another good reason not to use IE.

Chrome is installed with some third party apps.  IE is susceptible to people installing malware into it, just as any other browsers are.  The only real reason not to use IE8 is it performs terribly compared to the competition.

Seems more like you found a reason to switch from AVG than anything else.

Hmmmmm

Anything's possible........but I don't broadcast my home SSID and use a pretty strong WPA passphrase and MAC address filter. My laptop's running W7 x64 Pro and I use different security setting for public vs private networks. I use MS Security Essentials (memory resident, updated daily, scanned weekly) and to my knowledge haven't had an infection. It's my opinion that my information was compromised elsewhere. Considering the large numbers of people reporting the problem I have to wonder if the "elsewhere" was MS.