Adium? Jabber? MSN group chat woes

Question

Adium? Jabber? MSN group chat woes

I'm sorry to post this here. I've scoured Google, I've tried all the Adium forums and MSN forums... no one seems able to help me. Mac people are the only ones ever able to help, so I'm hoping you guys will forgive what is essentially a Microsoft issue I guess.

I have friends who have made a group chatroom in MSN. I downloaded messenger. I can talk to them individually or enter a group chat they initiate while I'm there. I can't access their chat room or come and go in it as they do. They had me set up a hotmail account. I got the invite, never could access the room from messenger. So I thought, ok, I'll use Adium.

Same problem. Join group chat option is grayed out. I can't find a way to get to their group. They made a different room, invited me to it, and I bookmarked it. It's there in my list, but when I logged out, I was unable to log back into it.

My friends are getting irritated, and I'm getting a headache. They're looking at me like my MacBook is the problem, but I know there must be a way around it. They have to create a totally new room every time, just to be able to include me in.

Please help. Anyone.

PowerBook G4, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jun 13, 2009 4:24 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 14, 2009 6:57 AM in response to Carmen Sisson

If you download and use an application called Mercury, you can have chats with your friends who use MSN and it will accept an MSN id (as well as an aim I think). I hope this helps.

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Answer 2

Jun 14, 2009 1:09 PM in response to Carmen Sisson

Are these ports open in your modem ? 1863,5190,6891-6900,6901

The Mac Firewall if On (Allow Specifics) will "certify" the app to get through that you use (MSN, AdiumX or other).

That leave s the modem or router and what ports are allowed or open there for MSN traffic.

9:09 PM Sunday; June 14, 2009

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

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Answer 3

Jun 14, 2009 5:34 PM in response to Ralph-Johns-UK

Paul, Adium works well to chat with them -- everything seems to work except the "join group chat" function. It's a slick little program though. If I absolutely have to do without iChat, it's a good alternative. MSN is so.... ugly. I've always hated using it.

Ralph, I usually have the firewall set to allow only essential services, so I just changed it to "Set access - allow all incoming traffic " for Adium and MSN. Do I need to worry about anything security-wise by doing this?

I don't know where to check the ports being used. The only place I've ever seen that option was in Mail preferences.

The whole thing has me stymied, because I generally troubleshoot my computer pretty well. I just can't solve this.

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Answer 4

Jun 15, 2009 12:14 PM in response to Carmen Sisson

Hi,

Allow All in the Leopard Firewall is in fact the firewall Off.

IM Apps are not Essential Apps.

That leaves Allow Specific Apps and adding the apps you want to the List.
When you launch an App not in the list the OS will pop up a message to ask you if you want to allow it internet access.

As most App "Phone Home" to check for updates it is a matter of personal choice to allow them or not at that point.

Turning Off Ping blocking in the routing device will allow the modem (most likely) to respond to Pings from the internet.
This make you "more visible" on the internet (You in this case being your Modem an your Public IP from your ISP).

In theory it is possible for someone to send that many Pings your modem will shut down the Internet connection.
In practice this is very rare.
The people that do it are normally aiming for big companies for various reasons.

If you connected to someone else in anyway over the internet there are apps/utilities like Little Snitch that tell you the Public IP and sometimes the LAN IP that an App is using to connect with.

I use little Snitch to see what ports the person wanting to test with me is using as it gives clues as to what they may need to change (open Ports).

Basically there is risk with any email you download to your computer.
More so if you open it.
Even more so if it has an item that requires further opening by an app on your computer such as a Word Doc.
Although Word Docs can be infected by Macro Viruses for PCs they will not run on your Mac. But if you pass the items On it can infect PCs.

There have been some Proof of Concept Viruses developed by Software companies that do Anti Virus stuff but OS X remains Virus free as a End user Platform.

I hope this helps

8:14 PM Monday; June 15, 2009

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

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