Windows Live Essentials release notes

When you reply to an e‑mail message from someone whose name is the same as one of your category names, the reply will be sent to the wrong recipients

If you reply to an e‑mail message whose sender has the same name as one of your contact categories in Windows Live Mail, the original sender's e‑mail address will be replaced with the e‑mail addresses in the category. This means the message will be sent to all of your contacts in that category rather than the intended recipient. There are two ways to work around this issue:

• Delete the category from the To: field, and then copy and paste the sender's e‑mail address to that field.

• To prevent this from happening again, rename the category so that it doesn't match the sender's name.

S/MIME certificates need to be re-established

S/MIME (Secure/ Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a security standard for public key encryption and the signing of e‑mail with a digital ID or certificate. If you use the Secure Mail (certificates) feature of Windows Live Mail to send or receive mail, you'll need to re-establish your S/MIME certificate and the certificates of each of your contacts with whom you exchange secure e‑mail.

You can set up your own S/MIME certificate by selecting the correct certificate in Windows Live Mail:

You can set up the certificate for each of your contacts by adding the certificate to your contact list:

Conversation window: Chinese/Japanese/Korean IME (Input Method Editor) reset to English in the Messenger conversation window

On a computer running Windows XP SP2 or SP3, if you receive an instant message while the Messenger main window is closed, and then try to type Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters in the conversation window using IME, the input mode will be reset to English and you won't be able to input Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters. To resolve this, reopen the Messenger main window and then resume typing in the conversation window.

Video: Webcam control and effects add-ins may stop working and not appear for webcams

Some webcam manufacturers provide controls for camera operations or effects that you can apply to the video experience within Messenger. These add-ins may stop working. If you don't see the webcam manufacturer's camera control and effects icon under your display picture in Messenger during a video call or webcam session, please consult your hardware manufacturer for an update.

Voice and video calls to Messenger beta or Messenger won't work

Voice and video calls can't be made between the beta version and the new release version of Messenger; or between Windows Messenger and release version of Windows Live Messenger. To use voice and video calls, the sender and receiver both need to install the latest version of Windows Live Messenger from http://download.live.com.

Sharing photos: Supported file types for sharing photos in Messenger

Messenger supports only .png, .jpg, .bmp, and .gif image formats. Any other image formats may not work correctly in Messenger.

Sharing photos: Photos can't be saved after a contact stops sharing photos

You can save photos in Messenger only while both people are actively sharing photos. If your contact has stopped sharing photos, you won't be able to continue saving photos.

Groups: Group members might not be able to join the group conversation

Sometimes group members appear online or available under a group within the Messenger main window, but are unable to join the group conversation. This happens when a group member is using a program that doesn't support groups, such as a previous version of Messenger, Xbox, Messenger for mobile, etc.

Groups: The group status shown in the Messenger main window may appear to conflict with the status of members within the group

It's possible that the status for a group may appear as offline, while members of the group listed below the group name in the main window may show as online. This is because the group status message shows the behavior when the group conversation window is opened.

Groups: The group's e‑mail address doesn't appear in Messenger

There's no entry point to the group's e‑mail address in Messenger. If you want to see the group e‑mail address, right-click the group's name in Messenger, and then click Go to group website. On the group website, you can see the group e‑mail address.

Groups: Some actions can be done only on the group's website

Some management actions (such as viewing or canceling pending invitations, removing members, and changing member roles or a group's name) can be done only on the group's website. To do these tasks, you must be an owner of the group. To quickly access the group management pages on the web, right-click the group in the Messenger main window, and then click Group Settings.

Groups: When inviting new members, you can't see who has already been invited

When you're selecting contacts to invite to a group, Messenger doesn't filter out any contacts who have already been invited to the group. However, contacts who have already been invited won't receive a new invitation.

Users under 13 with limited privileges can't sign in to Messenger

In accordance with permissions on the account, users who are younger than 13 years old (according to their Windows Live ID registered information) whose account privileges have been set to Limited won't be able to sign in to Messenger.

Form Fill, Favorites, and other button add-ons don't appear on Toolbar

When you upgrade from an earlier version of Toolbar, you will no longer see Form Fill, button add-ons from gallery.live.com, and other add-ons such as the Feed detector, Highlight Viewer, MSN Games, Popup Blocker, and Tabbed Browsing. The Favorites add-on has been replaced with the Favorites Sync feature in Toolbar.

After uninstalling Windows Live Essentials and installing the latest version of Writer, Writer doesn't start

To solve this issue:

Duplicate images appear in the Blog Images folder on SkyDrive

This is intentional. There are two images: a smaller image appears in the post and a larger image appears when the image in the post is clicked. If you delete any of the images, the pictures in your blog posts won't appear correctly.

Publishing posts with previous versions of Writer and then browsing the Blog Images folder on SkyDrive creates multiple Blog Images folders

To solve this issue, install the newest version of Windows Live Writer (http://writer.live.com). Don't delete the duplicate Blog Images folders. If you delete these folders, the pictures in your blog posts won't appear correctly.

If you've already signed in to Windows Live, and then you try to sign up for a new Windows Live ID from Writer, you'll see a blank webpage

If you want to sign up for a new Windows Live ID, you must go to the Windows Live website. Go to http://home.live.com and click Sign up.

The Options dialog will no longer open in Writer if you've added a glossary link that has no text

This issue occurs if you've inserted a link with no text in the Text to be displayed box of the Insert Hyperlink dialog box. If you encounter this error, take the following steps.

If you publish a blog post set to a previous date on Windows Live Spaces, the post will display the current date

To solve this issue, set the post to the correct date in Writer, and then republish.

Movie Maker wasn't installed with Windows Live Essentials

Movie Maker requires Windows Vista or Windows 7. If you install Windows Live Essentials using any other operating system, Movie Maker won't be installed.

Movie Maker can't start if your computer doesn't have Windows Media Player installed

Windows Live Movie Maker uses some components of Windows Media Player. Movie Maker can't start if it's installed on a version of Windows Vista or Windows 7 that doesn't include Windows Media Player, and you haven't installed Windows Media Player yourself.

To solve this issue, install Windows Media Player from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/AllDownloads.aspx.

Media can't be added from a network or external drive

You can only add media to Movie Maker from your local hard drive.

Movie Maker doesn't support certain file types

To see a list of supported file types, visit this link: http://g.live.com/DMWLMMv1/22

Or, in Movie Maker, click the Help button, and then search for file types.

Support for using MPEG-2 and Microsoft Recorded TV Show video files in your movies is available only if your computer is running one of the following versions of Windows: Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Enterprise, or Windows 7 Ultimate.

Depending on the camera you use to record video, you may need to install your camera's editing software before you can decode video in Movie Maker.

Movie Maker may stop working after a Remote Desktop session

If you try to run Movie Maker from a Remote Desktop session, you may have to restart Movie Maker when you connect back directly to the console.

Movie Maker may not run properly on some video hardware

Movie Maker makes extensive use of your video card's GPU (graphics processing unit). PCs with video cards that aren't intended for high-end graphics usage may encounter issues rendering video and effects in Movie Maker.

Videos may not render in Movie Maker if Nero software is installed on your PC

Some Nero software installs video filters that may conflict with Movie Maker. If you encounter this issue, please contact the software manufacturer to see if an update to their software is available. For an immediate workaround, you can unregister the NDParser.ax installed by Nero Ahead. You'll need to re-register NDparser.ax to allow Nero to function correctly again.

To unregister or re-register NDParser.ax, do the following:

Only TrueType fonts are supported in Movie Maker

Movie Maker supports TrueType fonts only. If you select a Raster font, Movie Maker will default back to the Arial font.

AVCHD performance might be poor on slower PCs or when displaying high-bitrate content in Movie Maker

AVCHD is a format for recording and playback of high definition video compressed in MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video format, with audio recorded in Dolby Digital. AVCHD video files can be used in Movie Maker only if your computer is running one of the following editions of Windows 7: Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Enterprise, or Windows 7 Ultimate.

Photo Gallery is dependent on the Windows Imaging Component (WIC)

Some functionality in Photo Gallery requires an update to the Windows Imaging Component (WIC). If you disabled the Windows Update service in Windows Vista or Windows 7, then this WIC update isn't installed, and some Photo Gallery features won't work (for example, saving people tags to your photos). To enable Windows Update, log on to your computer as the Administrator, and then do the following:

To verify that Windows Update is running:

If updates are detected, and you don't receive error 80244021, the service has started successfully.

You can't select Photo Gallery to run as default in the Windows AutoPlay dialog box or other default programs lists on 64-bit versions of Windows

To resolve this issue, you can run a registry file provided by Windows Live to enable this functionality.

After upgrading to Windows 7, you can't download photo albums from photos.live.com

To solve this issue, you need to repair your installation of Windows Live Photo Gallery.