Messenger Gadget screenshot - "Messenger not installed or blocked"
Some of you might have seen (or read comments about) a blank gadget with an “undefined” message in the previous version of the gadget. This “undefined” message have been replaced with the message in the screenshot above which includes a link to this article.
There are two reasons that I know of that cause this error. The first cause is that Windows Live Messenger is not installed. Yes, it has to be installed and the gadget can not run by itself. It runs alongside Windows Live Messenger. The gadget is not intended to replace Windows Live Messenger.
The second cause is a little bit more complicated so I’ll try to give a “not-so-technical” explanation and a more technical explanation for those curious.
Not-so-technical explanation:
The “program” that the gadget uses to get the information from Windows Live Messenger is blocked in you machine. There are at least two ways this can happen. One is that your administrator blocked it, the other is that you installed some version of WL Messenger that blocked it. For some reason that I don’t know, the “program” was blocked in one of the previous versions of WL Messenger. If you installed that version, it does not matter if you un-install it or install a newer version, once it is blocked, it is blocked for good.
The very technical explanation:
One of the previous versions of WL Messenger added the ActiveX control used by the gadget to the kill bit list. I highly recommend not messing with those setting as they may leave your machine in an unsafe and/or unusable state.