WLM 8.1 Beta

2006/09/28 in x86

• bug fixes
• Runs more stable on Windows Vista
• More personal stuff (winks & Emoticons)
• New Personal status
• New “Branding”-platform
• Improved login authorisation
• changed avatar options
• Automatic updates & Backup of your files

I’ve now installed 8.1. There are no new options. At least nothing that would count as such – when it comes to the GUI. Why something as important as bugfixes isn’t further addressed in the changelog is not understandable, that’s the one reason to read a changelog.

The first very remarkable thing is the time the installation process consumes. 9 minutes!

Verbose logging started: 27.09.2006 15:13:55

[…]

Verbose logging stopped: 27.09.2006 15:22:52

The (during installation) created log has 3,26 MB in size (TXT). Not bad.
Now, there was always one thing that disturbed me most in WLM/MSN Messenger, this one. And there is this “smaller bug” when a conversation window is opened for too long and it “eats” the links from all file transfers. Only closing/re-opening the window helps.
Since it took 9 minutes to install this monster (17,3 MB), I already hoped that something with the “\$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J:$DATA” had happened. And I wasn’t disappointed this time. The installation took this long, because WLM _defragged_ the disk! Now my “\$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J:$DATA” is 1 piece again, instead of 399! Incredible. A great thing, but mentioned nowhere, probably because they would need to admit the previous problem first.

However, the well known service (Messenger Sharing USN Journal Reader service) was modified further. It’s now running all the time (check the task manager for a usnsvc.exe) and not only when WLM is active. Older WLM versions started and stopped the service with every WLM session.

Still not the end of the story, one interesting detail remains: checking the event logs showed, that “SharingMetadata\Working\database_blablablabla” is defragged once per hour! Every hour – as long as WLM is running. Crazy shit. :D

In the end: Installing this version really makes sense (if using WLM anyway), at least the entire partition isn’t fucked up any longer by this chat client. When using a-patch and if they would fix the file transfer bug, WLM would almost be a good client, which uses more than 40 MB of RAM and ~25 MB of virtual memory + 2 MB for usnsvc.exe, for doing nothing more than tranferring text messages.