Question, about a security feature.

Ok, well, needless to say I am frustrated now.

This is what's happening; Every single time a friend sends me a song, an MP3, over msn, my computer says ''Windows has detected that this file is potentially harmful and has blocked/removed it'' then it disappears, guess it perma-deletes it. I have never had this problem until I re-formatted, and I was wondering if anyone can help me out, this is *Windows* saying this by the way, not my virus scanner or firewall.

I've just about fished through every setting, perhaps anyone knows a solution? Thanks in advance.

are you using outlook for your email??? if so check your security settings.
Or change to an email in yahoo or hotmail.

No, I use MSN hotmail. And they aren't delivering the files via email, just over the chat window, saved to my desktop when it finishes transferring.

have them send the file(s) in .rar or .zip and see what happens.
it sounds like something is snooping around on your comp....*cough* microsoft.

-I've never experienced this. if you don't use .rar/.zip, you could even try just changing the extension to something else while being sent. then re-naming it.

It's integrated into Windows Live Messenger. The implemented it because of all the worms that people were spreading over their networks in ways such as you mentioned. If you've ever used mIRC you'd see something similar.

It's been ages since I used Windows Live Messenger. What options are selected under File transfers?

Also, just as another option. If you're willing to try other IM clients I would highly recommend Pidgin.

I've used mirc, been to countless hubs, d/l gigs of junk, and never once got that type of message.

It's the DCC alert that pops up warning the file may be malicious, basically. So you may very well have gotten that message, or disabled it through the options.

yeah if i remember right, you can uncheck the pop somewhere. I just can't remember where.

/edit. Duh. with irc to disable the pop...the uncheck box is...on the pop-up itself. one can also just auto accept files as well.

@ Bri
I'm wondering if simply placing the file(s) in a folder(before sending) would work as well.

I had a few MSN patches to disable those features before, I didn't think it would be MSN doing this one though, I recall it being different in nature, though those were older versions.

And since they are older versions, I don't have those patches for the new version, so I suppose I'll have to transfer files via some other method, I got nearly every IM that is popular, even mIRC, so I have plenty of ways to do so

As for the options I have on, I just have the ''Scan for viruses using the windows live one care safty scanner'', however this problem was happening before I checked that box, the only other two options are ''Automatically reject file transfers for known unsafe file types'' and ''Automatically share backgrounds'' which I don't have on as I mentioned.

But thanks, this helps a lot, I was wondering for a while what the problem would ultimately be, It's no surprise that it is MSN, I have the new version, and my previous installation was an older one, so I guess that's no surprising news.

There are two patchers that I know of, A-Patch and Mess.be's Patcher.