Borrowing Google’s term – I have lately been using a flaky connection when connecting to the Internet. What I noticed is that my Yahoo! Messenger list becomes static and no custom messages are being updated. When I looked at my friend’s list, the custom message I set wasn’t showing. I was also not able to see when people get online or offline. I’m using Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.2161 for Windows.
I’ve tried all that I can think of – changing connection preferences, clearing message archives because I thought they grew too big, and up to the extent of reinstalling the whole application. I even blamed Symantec Endpoint Protection for it.
I found a simple remedy today – disable the “Always sign in to my mobile phone when I sign out of Messenger“. I have always thought that this option is convenient, especially when someone wants to convey a message for me when I’m not online. Well, okay I admit being lazy as this can easily be done by clicking on “Sign in to <cellphone number>” in the menu.
It turns out that the server is confused when you are online/offline so frequently – flaky connection. It’s a bug, yes.
Why am I not using Pidgin? Because I still want to separate my identities with the “send-as” functionality. With Pidgin I always revealed my identities to different group of people, and I don’t like it. I’ll reuse it once this feature is added.
So if you’re facing the same issue and have the option turned on, try to disable it.