A couple of weeks ago Microsoft temporarily blocked hotlinking in Windows Live Messenger 2009 to prevent the spread of malware - personally (being a born cynic) I found that fishy as it coincided nicely with the launch of the new controversal WLM 2011 and they haven't ever done this before through countless other malware/worm campaigns

So for those of you who want to risk re-enabling hotlinking heres the method found by the kind folks over at Generation Media Group

as always THIS IS ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK


  1. Download a free hex-editor program. I recommend XVI32.
  2. Exit messenger completely.
  3. Open XVI32, and then open the msnmgr.exe file that is located in your program files directory. C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Messenger\msnmsgr.exe
  4. Click “search”, then “find”, search for “hotlinks” (without quotes).
  5. Change “hotlinks” into something else, of the equal amount of characters. I changed mine to “totlinks”
  6. Save the file
  7. Restart MSN


Hope this helps some folks out there who like me don't want to upgrade to 2011