Yahoo! Messenger Plugins Problems

Before I prattle on about possible solutions the best piece of advise that I can give you at this stage is...patience... it will see you through :)

Here's why....
I spent most of yesterday playing with my Yahoo! Messenger Plugins, I use Andy's YEmote often, I've also started playing with Yahoo! Greetings eCard Plugin and Yahoo! Avatars Space has great possibilities, so I got up this morning rearing to go. I grabbed a bucket of coffee and set about exploring the Yahoo! Avatars Space Plug-in some more, but I was immediately faced with a big problem... no Plug-ins!

It wasn't that they had reset, didn't install, or that they didn't work, it was that I had none, they had vanished! Not a single plugin remained...arrrgghh!

At the best of times Andy calls me a twiddler (at the worst I think he'd like to break my fingers *blush*)... and I am a "twiddler" because if it's broken I'll try to fix it, if it's fixed I try to break it, all under the title of "improvement"... but I refused to twiddle with the plugin issue I was faced with and here's why I took the wait and see approach...

• during Yahoo! Messenger v8s beta phase I had suffered a similar problem, that being I was without plugins for well over 24 hours... for no obvious reason, one day they were there, the next not.. and the next not... but the day after that they came back. No rhyme nor reason for it, it just was, what it was... a hiccup :)

• I was pretty sure it wasn't a fault or problem on my side because I hadn't twiddled with any settings, I hadn't installed or uninstalled anything, I hadn't downloaded other plugins, I hadn't done anything that might be the cause of my plugins vanishing..... that makes a change ;)

• I logged in on my notebook under 2 of my Yahoo! ID's and it was the same thing... no plugins... hmm... not a me issue

so I waited, I didn't twiddle with anything, I just let them be and within the next 4-5 hours things were back to normal and all my plugins restored.... time, and patience works wonders :)

It doesn't work! It doesn't download! I installed it but it's not there!....
Now contrary to what your mother might have told you, that "time heals all wounds", with Yahoo! Plug-ins this might not be the case. Time and patience may heal some issues but time does not heal everything, especially if you don't quite understand plug-ins or you are a YTunnel user.

The most common issue seems to be that plug-ins are downloaded and then installed but don't appear, generally this falls into 4 categories....

1. The plug-in downloaded and installed perfectly, it's just not enough time has been permitted for it to actually load. Plug-ins range in size from 10kb to over 200kb so a certain amount of time is needed for it to be available.... make a coffee, wait a little while then come back and see if it's ready for action.

2. People don't know where the plug-in will be available from and because it doesn't leap up and beat them over the head they assume (or automatically launch ;) they assume the plug-in has failed... this isn't always the case. We covered the two different types of plug-ins "Tab Plug-ins" and "Conversation Plug-ins" in our article Yahoo! Messenger v8 Plug-ins but here is a quick run down for you....
• Tab Plug-ins, once installed, are located right underneath your friends list and they cover things like Yahoo! 360°, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo! Calendar, iTunes and Ebay etc.. basically they provide instant information.
• Conversation Plug-ins are quite different, these are available when you're having an Instant Messenger conversation, the button to access them is only available from your Instant Messenger window during an IM session.

If you've installed a Conversation Plug-in like Andy's YEmote, this is only available from within an active IM session, this is the first place to look when you are searching for a plug-in that's gone astray.

3. You have YTunnel installed. Here's a brief summary of our forum thread Yahoo Mess v8 Smiley Plug-in available, please don't go making any changes to your registry until you have read all the postings fully, chances are that thread will be updated and maintained whereas this page will remain static.

The long and the short of it is basically this...
mysticalos posted that they were unable to use plug-ins. The plug-in would download, prompt to install, yet never appear after that, it's a very common account of what's been happening for many users, a few days later mysticalos posted again having well and truly identified the issue as being a registry change by YTunnel which quietly prevents the installation of plugins, despite the install prompt. Here's a couple of quotes from mysticalos posts...

please don't forget to read the entire forum thread though so that you get it in context and fully understand what's going on.

4. You need to have Yahoo! Messenger version 8 installed, you can download it from http://messenger.yahoo.com. If you unsure what version you currently have installed you can access your version information from within Yahoo! Messenger via Help > About Yahoo! Messenger a wee About box pops up telling you what version you have.
If you are still running the beta version (easily spotted in the About box as it's clearly stated before the version number) the download the production release, Yahoo! Messenger version 8 we released as a GA version 27 July so if you haven't updated since then go grab it now :)

Notes:
Yahoo! offers plug-in help via their own website, you can check out their plug-in information here.