Windows Live Messenger 2011 Crashes While Signing In. Other Probs.

As the thread title says. I had a hard time installing Windows Live Essentials, firstly, I tried installing my 2010 version, before the big change as I hated having to register my name to change it....but when running the installer it would always crash, well shoot, guess I'll install 2011. I download the installer and start to install: Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Messenger and Writer, click install, it installs then at the end says: "1 item did not install successfully..." didn't even tell me which one so i restarted my computer then re-installed 2011, this time it went fine, all programs installed perfectly, so I decided to run Messenger, it comes up, then I sign in and it loads up everything then comes to the: "Get Started" page, where it shows Social highlights and MSN Highlights, either one I click causes it to crash seconds after clicking it with no error code, no solution and no troubleshooter pops up.

So I restart Messenger and sign in again, this time it crashes while signing in so I followed a few supposed fixes that failed, such as deleting the user folder in: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\MSNMESSENGER\PERPASSPORTSETTINGS\"Randomly numbered folder". Then I start Messenger AGAIN, this time it signs in, then to the Start screen and again, choosing either Social Highlights or MSN Highlights causes it to crash and restarts the whole process again.

Now, i don't know if some of you might remember me from not to long ago when i had the REALLY slow Windows 7 problem and ended up having to reinstall due to there not being any fixes, well, I got this problem twice, and then Black Ops installed bad C++ Redist packs, TWICE and the only fix for that is also a reinstall, then some of my Windows 7 components wouldn't work right such as my Screen Savers, they would crash and sometimes crash Explorer too and had to reinstall again, and I sooo thought that was the final time, until now, some programs don't want to install and just crash such as CCleaner and Windows Essentials 2010 which leads me to think my MSInstaller is corrupt as I've also tried to fix that, but to no avail so far. I'm starting to think maybe it's a problem with my computer, BUT, it can't be the MOBO or CPU OR GPU as the I replaced my old computer with a same exact model, just never used, cause I bought these from an office that was trashing them AND I installed a new GPU, the two HDD's are fairly new and I've had no problem with the RAM, so please, I beg of you, I REALLY DON'T WANT TO REINSTALL WINDOWS 7, AGAIN. But I've also not seen any of these problems on my Dad's laptop which does lead me to think it's my computer as it is outdated and not even a Dual-Core, but I was running Windows 7 for so long with no problems then bam, out of the blue a crap load of problems.


PC Specs:

CPU: AMD Sempron 3400+ 3DNOW MMX SSE @ 1.8GHz
GPU: ATi Sapphire HD Radeon 5570 @ 1GB DDR3
RAM: 1.5GB DDR3
HDD's: Two 160GB. Seagate Barracuda, Western Digital Caviar Blue. Both at 7200RPM and 2.5" modded into case.
OS: Windows 7 Pro x64 and Windows XP Pro x64 Dual-Booted. Windows 7 is Main due to GPU having DX11 support.

Installed Programs: Windows 7 Updates, A TON. Firefox, Thunderbird, Glary Utilities, Microsoft Security Essentials, Windows Live Essentials, Google Chrome, Games for Windows LIVE, Steam and a ton of games, more games, Java and My SQL for Custom Minecraft Servers.

Also, I'm not sure if this is a problem, but Windows installed Live Essentials in my x32 Program Folder: (Program Files (x86)). Internet Explorer x32 also crashes right upon startup, yet the x64 version is perfectly fine.

Help is very appreciated as my PC has been driving me completely mad lately.

I've been running Windows 7 without a single problem on this same setup for almost a year until it started to have problems, and I can't really use Windows 7 Pro x32 as my system has a x64 CPU, using x32 would lag my system and I only have my x64 DVD anyways.

Though I might hopefully get a new extremely powerful setup soon once I get the funds, but I get the feeling it won't be for atleast quite a few months which is why I'm trying everything I can to get Windows 7 to work decently again as I've no idea why it's been giving me so many problems lately.

Layback Bear said:

Windows 7/32 will not slow you computer down when you only have 1 gig of ram.Your system is way under specs for Windows 7 to work properly. You don't understand because it use to work. I don't understand how it worked for a year.
That being said I do have a idea that might help. Check in msconfig then Start up and see what is checked.Their might be to many things running in the background and you are just running of computer for them. To give you an idea, I have 3 check marks.

Well, except that I have a x64 processor and having a x32 OS would most likely cause slower load times due to my CPU having to emulate a x32 CPU. Yes, it worked fantastically and great, it was never slow and even playing games had no severe FPS impact from playing on XP to Win7, FPS was actually the same except for maybe 1 or 2 frame drops on Win 7 I wouldn't experience using XP.

Things I've already checked, all I have on Startup is MS Security Client, WL Messenger, Realtek HD Audio, Java Updater, AMD Vision Control Panel and Zune Startup Client. All of which use little to no system resources besides MS Security Client and Messenger which didn't even come up last startup, I'm an advanced PC user and I debug as much as possible before ever asking a question and I check dump files if there are any, in this case, there aren't due to Messenger just crashing with no error and I run a schedule of checking up on my PC every week, Antivirus, Glary Utilities, clean Trash and Temporary files and defrag my HDD's. But I do get the feeling that my main HDD is going off the deep end because it is a Seagate Barracuda, the same model that starts to lock up randomly and I'm not fond of Seagate due to many bad HDD swaps in the past, I'm a Western Digital person as I've never had a single one go bad yet.

If you think it's weird for Win 7 to run on this, I got Windows 8 x32 Pre-Beta to run on 1.7GHz Pentium 4, 32MB Video Card, 1GB DDR1 RAM as a test on a rubbish PC and it actually works fairly decent, only slow when using the Metro UI.

But that's besides the point, I just don't see why I'm having all these problems all of a sudden, but right now my only problem really is just Messenger and not being able to install some applications such as CCleaner as I think might be due to MSInstaller.

EDIT: Also, I would like to say that even when my PC is under heavy load like: Chrome with quite a few tabs open, Windows Media Player or Zune, Photoshop CS5, Thunderbird and my second monitor or HDTV on secondary and my PC resource usage is about CPU: 50-70% RAM: 70-80% and my GPU shows just about 5% because of the extra monitor and Photoshop.

My little PC has quite a kick for it's age and size it's about 5 years old and a lower end model.

Hmm, yes, I can see the problem there, but I'm not having any problems with Windows 7 in itself, just messenger, which worked perfectly fine before reinstalling Win7, I'm just not quite sure what the problem is and I've just found that Messenger dumped an error log the last time I ran it and it's full of error codes and just from a quick look, it might be due to webcam and voice chat as that's the final entry of the log but that's just a quick educated guess.

Well, I couldn't find a solution but I figure I know what caused it. Anyways, I just reinstalled Win7 again for the last time and figured I'd be done with it, until I find out that my MAK has exceeded it's limit and the Microsoft Support Hotline is a joke and even kept me on hold for an hour until they closed and today is a bust as they weren't open due to it being a holiday and I can't get help through the Solution Center as when I describe the problem it tells me my Key isn't valid for my Region when I bought it from my buddy's College account whom only live's a few miles from me and goes to Victor Valley College in California. I'm really getting tired of all the problems I've been having and am at a loss as to what I should do to get my MAK problem sorted out.