Trillian and MSN news roundup…
Hello everyone,
There’s been alot of activity this week regarding Trillian’s connectivity to MSN and we wanted to take a moment to summarize. As of today, July 30th, all versions of Trillian are experiencing service outages when connecting to MSN.
Trillian 3.1 is using an older version of the MSN protocol. As of this week Microsoft has dropped support for this protocol. The quick fix is to upgrade to Trillian 4 (or the upcoming Trillian 5). Over the longer term, we will work on a patch for the Trillian 3 series. Once Trillian 5 is released we will begin phasing out support for 3, so please consider upgrading to 4 or 5 in the coming months.
As of this morning, Trillian 4 and all related mobile products are also having trouble connecting to MSN. This is not due to a protocol change, but rather a temporary server outage on Microsoft’s side. We are monitoring the issue and should the situation require us to patch Trillian we will do so. At present we’re experiencing the outage with both Trillian and the official WLM client, although due to various caching mechanisms there’s a chance you’d still be able to connect with either product for a limited period of time.
Update: MSN is slowly starting to work again for Trillian 4 and all mobile products. We expect things to be back to normal within 24 hours; if they are not, we will likely issue a workaround. Thanks for your patience!
Have a great weekend!
July 30th, 2010 at 9:34 am
Thank you for the info!
July 30th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Thanks for the info.
July 30th, 2010 at 9:41 am
Thanks for the info Scott!
July 30th, 2010 at 9:43 am
Thanks, your work on this issue and attention to this matter is appreciated; Keep us posted
July 30th, 2010 at 9:46 am
Well what do you know, those M$ bastards changed something again, blegh.
Can you please give us an estamate when these issues are going to be resolved ?
July 30th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Thanks for the information Scott!
July 30th, 2010 at 9:49 am
I especially like how you mentioned that support for Trillian 3 will be phased out when Trillian 5 is released.
suprised it took this long, lol
July 30th, 2010 at 10:01 am
Appreciate the heads-up. Have a good weekend!
July 30th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Thank you Scott! Very helpful post.
July 30th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Tnx for the update
July 30th, 2010 at 10:45 am
Thanks for the updates!
Can’t wait for 5
July 30th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Still not working from me on my PC or iPod Touch
July 30th, 2010 at 11:19 am
Not working with Astra —
July 30th, 2010 at 11:28 am
Thankfully, I don’t use the MSN protocol as much as I use to. In any case, it’s good that the problem has been solved.
I can’t wait for Trillian 5. I’d love to have Tumblr support later on in the future.
July 30th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Mine is still not working. I tried using Windows Live Messenger and it connects without problem, but Trillian Astra will not connect to MSN. I just downloaded the new Trillian yesterday, too, to deal with the MSN loss on 3.1. Getting frustrated!
July 30th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Thanks for removing my post because you are blaming Microsoft for this issue. Digsby worked fine during the so called “outage”. Sorry if you don’t appreciate competition, but to lie to your users is why I am switching.
July 30th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
@Woohah: Digsby uses a different version of the MSN protocol than Trillian does. The older version of the protocol doesn’t rely on the same set of servers and thus is unaffected by the current issue.
The servers seem to be coming up and down. We expect they will settle out over the course of the day.
July 30th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Not working for me, but Live Messenger is.
July 30th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
I’m not understanding any now… On Monday the problem is because Trillian 3.1 has protocol old version what was not acceptable anymore by MSN servers. I got instructions to upgrade to Trillian 4.2 to solve the issue. I move to 4.2 and paid to have full version and in fact yesterday worked fine. Today we are facing again problem to connect MSN. Sorry but a lot of people use Trillian as job tool and can not be out so long time. I really frustrated.
July 30th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
I cant connect to the MSN net too. I use the trillanAstra pro ver. 4.2 Build 20.
Please tell me if i need download a new protocol. Thanks
July 30th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
and …………. it’s not working .. again.
Can I get a f*cking refund? Sick of this and other clients disconnecting and reconnecting. Not being able to transfer files is the worst of it though. Maybe once out of every 20 or 30 attempts can i transfer a file. Trillian’s been around long enough you’d think this kind of thing would be sorted out by now – particularly when you’ve got these pesky notifications that bug you to purchase. I purchased now make this sh*t work.
July 30th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
I have problems connecting again with the live messenger accounts. I know they are working to resolve the problem, so I hope they will succeed sooner
July 30th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
I think the information was pretty clear guys, is not a problem caused by Trillian Astra, actually Trillian works well , problems occurred from microsoft servers.
July 30th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
I have Trillian 4.2 and iPhone version. The desktop version is still unable to connect to MSN. I read the post and the update that the outage issue has been resolved, but I still can’t connect.
July 30th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Now my contact list for Messenger has been disassociated from my messenger account. When I hover over one of my messenger contacts, it says “this contact is not associated with any of your current online windows live messenger connections”. WTH. All my contacts appear offline. I’m rendered useless.
July 30th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
MSN not working for me either hope it will be fixed soon
July 30th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
MSN IS NOT WORKING on 4.2 build 20
July 30th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Still not working here, Astra 4.2 Build 20. Sits there at ‘creating connection’ and does nothing.
July 30th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Not working for me either… been off and on all day
July 30th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
also experiencing connection problems with msn, still
July 30th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Hi! My Trillian Astra didn’t work during this evening, my contacts seems to be orphaned. I solved it installing another IM client (Miranda), opening it with my MSN adress, closing it and opening Trillian again. I still don’t understand why, but it works! (I hope not for only a few minutes) xDD Thanks for the work!
July 30th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Well…I’ve tried everything that I can think of except installing a 3rd party IM client. My MSN contacts are orphaned. They still say “this contact is not associated with any of your current online windows live messenger connections”. I’ve installed Windows Live Messenger Beta but it keeps signing in and out every few seconds. Annoying as hell
July 30th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
I just tried connecting to my MSN account using Miranda as skamada suggested. That still does not fix Trillian. Miranda is able to connect to MSN just fine and I see all of my contacts, some online as well. I have no clue whats going on but this has got to be something wrong with Trillian 4.2 build 20.
July 30th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Miranda rocks! I really feel like I’ve wasted $15 on Trillian Pro for Windows and an additional $4.99 for the iPhone version. Trillian is basically useless and a waste of $$$ and time if it doesn’t allow me to seamlessly connect to all services without interruptions. Frankly disappointing. I’ve submitted at least 3 technical support requests and none have seen any response. All I get is an auto-generated response. The support website clearly states “Paid customers will receive priority technical support from our staff”. Well…I’ve paid and I’ve paid aplenty but I haven’t seen any response. There is only so much you can bend before it breaks.
July 30th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Confirmed quick solution for MSN droppings: Get Miranda IM, log in, review your friend list and log off, then resume using Trillian.
Apparently Trillian denied some friend requests, that Miranda promptly showed me when I logged on. I hope this helps.
July 30th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Can’t say I’ve seen any problems on the 30th. It may have to do with internal user segmenting withing the MSN server network. I leave Trillian open all day, and so far, it’s been up all day. It seems to be be something on Microsoft’s side, not Trillian.
Trillian 4.2b20
July 31st, 2010 at 10:09 am
You’re a 3.x user, am I right?
July 31st, 2010 at 11:59 am
Nope, 4.20 user here. Possibly it was something in M$’s side, as hinted.
July 31st, 2010 at 5:02 pm
It will be a sad day when Trillian 3 is no longer supported, since I use it on my primary PC, which runs Win98SE. Yeah, I know that’s ancient but I prefer it over every newer M$OS. Of course, it helps that I’m a computer systems and electronics engineer so that I can keep it in good running condition. IT does what I want and without all the DRM and other intrusive garbage that M$ keeps adding to the newer OSs. So, once Trillian 3 becomes useless for MSN and AIM (like it currently is for Yahoo), I will simply uninstall it I only used Trillian because it was easier than running and keeping track of messages on 3-4 different chat programs at once.
July 31st, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Bit disappointing that Cerulean are providing a lower level of support to 3.1 users when it is still a supported version of their software. The suggested fix is to give them more money and to get a newer version ?? how about if you don’t want to support the supported versions then you GIVE us the latest version gratis ?
Anthony
August 1st, 2010 at 8:24 am
Now, this is weird. If it’s an issue with Microsoft why would you be able to resolve that with a “workaround”.
Also, many other clients do work.
So if that is the case then you should blame your ancient protocol implementation, not microsoft or anything.
Further, being a customer with pro versions I really wonder why support for a supported software is so bad. Trillian 3, although I’m not using it anymore, should be supported in the same was as 4 and 5 unless you officially drop support for it (which would always be an option but for that you’d have to be honest to the customers).
I don’t think this blog post was thought out well, at least it seems to be very flawed logic to me.
August 1st, 2010 at 2:15 pm
@Dottedfish … there are 2 problems, the server issue affected 4.2 …that was Microsoft’s end that was messed up and it is fixed. 3.1 is failing because Microsoft is killing off support of that protocol version, so they will need to update it to a newer protocol version as a patch. Most of the other clients that work are on an MSN protocol that is older than 4.2.
@Anythony, there is a free version of 4.2 that works just fine. And did you JUST buy 3.1? If you bought it recently your 4.x update would have been free anyways. 3.1 only came with a year of support, the 4.x license is written out much better and its good all the way until 5.0 regardless of time duration. Plus you can update for as little as $10 USD … your just being silly expecting it to be free forever.
@Scott, how can you be all those things and expect us to believe you? Windows 98 is garbage by today’s standards, has tons of security holes and won’t run most modern software. Not to mention it is as slow as frozen crap melting in the arctic. While you are right that 4.x will not run on Windows 98, I think you deep down know you are in fact very much overdue for an OS update. I certainly would never want to work with a computer systems and electronics engineer that thought Windows 98 was good. Not to mention most people that mention their titles in blog posts are full of crap.
August 1st, 2010 at 4:21 pm
@Scott: “It will be a sad day when Trillian 3 is no longer supported […]” – You are using a horribly outdated operating system, the manufactor dropped support with long ago (July 06). So why do you even bother with arguing about dropped support?
You make it really hard to believe that you are a computer systems engineer.
August 1st, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Glad I ran into this blog post… Very informative and it made feel that I am note alone with my problems connecting (NOT) to MSN as soon as I purchased / upgraded to Trillian Astra Pro.
What is puzzling to me is that I am connecting to MSN on my tablet pc (windows 7 with Norton) with Astra, but I cannot to MSN from my second system, which is running Windows XP and McAffee. From this blog, this doesn’t appear to be an OS / Win issue. Why am I able to connect to MSN with Astra in one but not the other? I added the info on the Norton / McAffee software, as I read that the personal firewall may had been the issue. Turning it off in McAffee did not resolve the issue.
I finally broke down and installed Windows Live Messenger (Yikes!) after many hours of trying just about every suggestion on the internet so that I can connect with my MSN friends.
Is a solution to this MSN / Astra connection issue coming soon?
BTW – I like Trillian Astra and didn’t find the transition from 3.x that drastic. It didn’t take long to adjust to the new UI and such. I have been a Trillian user for many years.
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:34 am
@DiamondNRG
I’m experiencing connectivity issues since a while though on 4.2. And even if there’s 4.2 – if they still support 3.x then there should be support, not just a promise to keep people happy.
And actually I have vintage systems too and Win98 isn’t slow. In fact it’s much faster than Vista and 7 but of course isn’t running on advanced hardware anymore so any kind of comparison is futile to begin with. However, there is always meaning in keeping a vintage system since some stuff doesn’t even run on anything beyond or on XP. There isn’t that much innovation going on – neither in games nor application software. In fact the mechanics are still very much the same.
So yeah, I can understand him and having said there is always solutions to keep even an old system running by simply attaching it to a modern server that hosts the data. Even if you have a breach it won’t affect your data. And security holes, indeed, it’d be better to isolate it from the web but any system out there has security holes so that’d mean by your conclusion we have to browse from a gaming console or whatever.
Attacking him furiously for just that however is kind of useless. The world is full of different people and I always see you attacking people for the sake of Trillian. Trillian is just a stupid little tool, not even one of the best for the job and it does have an amazing amount of flaws. So instead you should actually support the individuality since he easily could just dump the software as it seems he is okay with minimal chat support only anyways.
You might think you explain your thoughts well but they’re still just your own and pretty much isolated. A company has responsabilities and if they want to say: “Trillian 3 is dead, get 4 or 5.”, then your ideology would be understandable. But for now they do not say this so everyone who expects Trillian 3 to work is in the right.
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:56 am
@dottedfish, again you attack me publicly and I will ask you to stop this now.
And regarding your last point, it clearly says right in the blog post that 3.1 will be unsupported when 5.0 launches. Please learn how to read.
August 2nd, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Hi! Some time ago I licensed Trillian Pro, will there also be an update? And is there a recommended upgrade path? tia wohlgetan
August 2nd, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Where will we be able to find the patch for the 3 series when it is released?
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:06 pm
You guys are awesome. Just sayin’. Also, release a Linux client! Empathy is pathetic, and Trillian is superior to Pidgin.
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:13 pm
@Scott: Windows 98? *Really*? That’s a 13 year old OS. It doesn’t support large hard drive sizes, modern versions of DirectX, no subpixel font hinting (read: looks like crud on LCDs), has IE-Ancient (read: exploits up the wazoo), and has NO support from the manufacturer, meaning all issues in the past five years are unpatched. Its hardware support is so old it probably doesn’t even use modern hardware. Now, one might argue that it’s mostly a net machine. However, Gmail would cripple the browsers that run in it, and I believe Flash 8+ won’t run on it, either (throwing errors on a bunch of sites). If you’re a CSE, I’m a Cylon.
August 3rd, 2010 at 11:31 am
Er. Is it just me, or has the 24 hour estimated time period well and truly passed? Is anyone else still having no love with connecting to MSN? Could we perhaps have an update?
August 3rd, 2010 at 11:51 am
my msn still does not work and its been like this since Saturday. Please advise.
August 3rd, 2010 at 12:44 pm
I hate Messenger, I have been with trillian since is first version, now I´m forced to install this sh*t because Astra becomes unusable. To me, seems the problem is not with the Microsoft, the problem is with CS wich is unable to solve this problem. I think too, the version 3.1 should be pacthed to work with the new protocol, to attend many users wich dont want to “upgrade” do 4.0. Well, maybe about one month more to be connected to MSN with Astra or 3.1…. I quit.
August 3rd, 2010 at 1:28 pm
MSN works perfectly here…
August 4th, 2010 at 8:50 am
Still can’t connect to MSN through Trillian Astra Prop…. It’s been several days now. I installed Windows Live Messenger.
Would love to return to Trillian… Any news on a fix for the MSN issue?
August 4th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Thrilled that there will be a patch for 3.1. Thank you!
August 4th, 2010 at 11:04 pm
Could you please give us a status update on the patch?
I am a paying Pro customer since 2003 and though I appreciate your excitement about public beta of your new Trillian/Astra 5, I would prefer that the critical patches affecting connectivity are done promptly.
Most open source messenger clients are updated within days, if not hours.
If you do not want to support your paying customers – open the source code to Trillian Pro 3, there are still a lot of people who use it and it’s a major pain in the ass to switch.
August 5th, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Hey there critical masses!
I’m concerned that the Cerulean blog post statement “Over the longer term, we will work on a patch for the Trillian 3 series” means little more than “maybe we’ll implement a patch for the new MSN protocol in the v3 Trillian series, or maybe we won’t”. Since it implies an open time frame and because it’s often not reasonable to count on a ‘maybe’, I’m not going to hold my breath. I guess what I’m saying is that v3.1 users who opt to wait for a patch may be waiting a very long while.
August 6th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
This seems strange… I’ve been checking for updates for Trillian 3.1 in hopes that CS developers will jump on this issue and implement a patch to fix the currently lacking MSN connectivity. There have been no available updates listed until today. The problem, though, is that today’s update for v3.1 is labeled as a fix for a Yahoo! connection problem. My Yahoo! connectivity has been working fine so I’m not sure why it needed a fix. But I downloaded and installed the patch anyway, hoping there may have been something hidden in it to fix the MSN issue (which is really the big problem, after all). As expected, though, MSN still won’t connect.
This begs the question: Why dedicate time implementing a patch for Yahoo! when Yahoo! seems to work fine, and ignore implementing a desperately needed patch to fix MSN when MSN doesn’t work at all anymore on this version of Trillian?
August 6th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Follow-up issue:
Even after installing the update mentioned in my last post, subsequent update checks from my Trillain v3.1 client still show the same update as being available.
It shows: “Trillian 3.1.14.0 – Fixes Yahoo! connection issue.”
That’s peculiar because before today update checks from my client responded with: “No software updates available.”
Why would an update that has already been installed for a problem that doesn’t exist –and one which doesn’t address the huge MSN issue– start showing up as persistently available?
At the very least, the fact that the update has already been installed and is still showing as available makes me doubt the dependability of Trillian’s update system.
August 8th, 2010 at 7:23 am
looks like they are still bullshit us , there is a lot more than the “next 24 hours” and also a lot more than one week since this problem still exists . so what are you up to cs ? also for a lot of days no more answer to people’s remarks here . looks like you are answering only to thumbs up for your products , but when it is a problem you disappear . let’s see if now we will get a reply on the forum . a great day to everyone !
August 9th, 2010 at 9:08 am
is this the reason there is no support for webcam and mic chats in MSN?
August 9th, 2010 at 11:19 pm
It’s August 10 and still no fix! No response from CS!…..unbelievable.
August 10th, 2010 at 12:41 am
Trillian 4.2 build 20 is still not working on MSN for me.
August 10th, 2010 at 10:57 am
I think we have been patient and waited for a fix. However, it is August 10 today and this is ridiculous. I will not spend any more money on a Cerulean Studios product since this is the kind of service your loyal clients receive. I will begin to look for alternatives. I have used your product for years – and this incident has been a major disappointment.
August 10th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Hello everyone – we have a beta release available for testing now. Please try http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/trillian-v3.1.15.0.exe and let us know if MSN is working correctly.
August 10th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
I downloaded and installed the new Trillian Basic v3.1.15.0 from the above link, and it seemed to connect to icq and msn, then disconnected, then connected/disconnected continued. No contacts are coming in, and the connect/disconnect for both icq/msn continues after 5 mins.
August 11th, 2010 at 10:21 am
I am having trouble connecting to MSN with 4.2 and 5.0. I just downloaded 3.1.15 and am able to successfully connect and chat with an MSN account using Trillian-MSN.
August 11th, 2010 at 10:27 am
Same, the 5. beta msn doesnt work either… so there is no version of trillian working on msn.
August 11th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!
Installed the v3.1.15.0 beta release from the link above and MSN works perfectly Plus the AIM nag warning has stopped.
Hoping this newly released version fixed both issues since I love v3.1
August 11th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
I upgraded to the 3.1.15, since 3.x is the only set of versions allowed at my workplace. It connects to MSN, Y!, and AIM fine, but it wrecked all of my groups and reset all of my contact names to their service name rather than the friendly name I’d given them. E.g. Bob Barker became gameshowhost, and I don’t remember who most of these people are.
August 11th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
Thank god it works again!!! Long live trillian 3. The best IM client ever made!
August 12th, 2010 at 1:35 am
I wasn’t able to install the v3.1.15.0 beta release on my Win98SE system, so I installed it on another system and then copied the msn.dll and the aim.dll files to the plugins directory on the Win98SE system and Trillian connected just fine to MSN and to AIM without the nag message.
Thanks for the quick support.
August 12th, 2010 at 10:53 am
great idea, i just copied the msn.dll and aim.dll from their new install file and pasted it in my old version and it solved my problems.
August 12th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Guys, thanks a million for the MSN and AIM fixes. I tried the beta release first. Since it installed the Xobni on my system I didn’t like it. However, I saved and copied over just the msn.dll and aim.dll into the plugins folder of my backed-up Trillian directory. Again, thanks so much for your efforts. My Trillian Pro is working fine now. It is a great product!
August 14th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Copying msn.dll and aim.dll from ver. 3.1.15.0 back into original ver. 3 made the older version work great!
August 14th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
@DiamondNRG and Patrick W: Both of you assume more than was told. I said that my “primary” PC (aka the one that I use the most) runs Win98SE. I have 4 other computers running either Win2KSP4, WinXP SP3, or Mandriva Linux. So attacking me for having “antiques” is hardly productive. Since I begin in my career in electronics as a computer systems tech in the early 80’s, I have a different philosophy regarding so-called out-dated/obsolete hardware and software. Basically, it’s two things: 1).If it isn’t broke…don’t fix it! and 2). Newer doesn’t mean better! The result of that philosophy is that just from perfectly good spare parts from my own upgrades, I’ve been able to build up and give away 6 PCs, in the past 5 years, to less fortunate families so that the children could have the benefits of having a computer to help with school. No, none of them were Quad-Core 3Ghz systems but a PII 350 or PIII 500 is still fast enough for the intended purposes. So, trying to belittle me or infer that my professional qualifications are less than believable, is merely a disservice to yourselfs and does not affect me in the slightest. On the topic of security holes, I will simply say this: On the rare occasion where I’ve managed to “acquire” some bit of malware on my Win98SE system, I’ve had no very little problem removing it; and I frequently use my Win98SE PC and old software tools (that will not run directly under WinXP/Vista) to fix problems on PCs running those OSs. DOS and Win98SE might be obsolete but they are far from useless.
@DiamondNRG: You accuse dottedfish of “again” attacking your publicly…after you had just “publicly” attacked me for my post. In fact, what I mostly read was dottedfish attempted to defend my posted position, not a personal attack on you. You need to improve your reading comprehension skills. The CS post plainly states that support for Trillian 3 will be phased out AFTER Trillian 5 is released. Dottedfish’s point was that Trillian 5 has not been released, so Trillian 3 should still be receiving the same level of “maintenance support” to keep it working properly until then..and yet that is not what’s happening.
August 14th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
I just copied the new plugins to my 3.1.7.0 trillian and both MSN and AIM seem to be working.
August 17th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Thank you, really appreciate the fix of both AIM nag and MSN!
August 26th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Yeah, it’s been almost a month and I still can’t log into MSN using Trillian, no matter how many times I uninstall then reinstall, restart computer, or update it.
September 2nd, 2010 at 10:00 am
Thank you a lot.
Installed the v3.1.15.0 beta release from the link above and MSN is now working again perfectly.
I love Trillian v3.1.
thanks for having been fixed the issue.
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:41 pm
I was running Trillian 4.2, MSN hasnt been working for a few days now. I installed 3.1, and it works..
But.. how is installing an old, outdated version considered a ‘fix’? Will this ever actually be fixed so the new versions that people pay for work?
September 3rd, 2010 at 6:48 pm
I was running Trillian 4 and everything was fine. After upgrading to Trillian 5, I cannot connect to MSN anymore.
September 5th, 2010 at 6:52 am
The link below fixed my issue with MSN and Yahoo for 4.2. However I think an actual fix that doesn’t require a proxy (since however many thousand people who dont read this post) is needed. I just added the proxy, rebooted trillian, done.
http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101115