Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, Apple iPhone, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

Missing audio alerts in Yahoo Messenger?

I do not get any alerts (neither audio nor pop-up) when any of my friends login/logoff from Yahoo Messenger. Most of the time they appear online long after they have signed out, and i have to sign out and sign in again which is annoying.

Dave's Answer:

This would indeed be annoying. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to fix this problem, if your configuration is what I think it is with Yahoo Messenger.

Start up the application, it'll look like this:

Now, click on the Preferences option in the Messenger menu along the top:

and you'll be take to Preferences for the application. The second of the options is "Alerts & Sounds" and that's what you want to check. Here's how I have mine set:

The key is to ensure that you have "Enable alert sounds" and/or "Showing a message at the bottom right corner of the screen" (or both). If you have both set, then I suspect that your buddy list is messed up and/or your preferences are messed up. In that case, you might try uninstalling the application then reinstalling it again.

Good luck!

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumble Upon

Categorized: Windows Help (Article 6367)
Tagged: Yahoo messenger, yim
Previous: How can I copy DVD movies to my Sony PSP?
Next: How can I avoid government censors when accessing the Internet?

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

the above option didn't work out for me.... as it is default and the sound alerts are enabled but i dont get any sound alert..., i don't think there is any problem with the sound driver cuz rest of all the software works fine

Posted by: raj at June 29, 2006 11:05 AM

My messenger today suddenly stopped giving me alerts when I receive Email. Other alerts still work. Do you have any suggestions?

Posted by: Oscar McNew at August 9, 2006 1:37 AM

I too had missing sounds from Messenger 8 and followed this link to put them back in:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/messenger/messenger8/messenger/messenger-38.html

Posted by: Dotsy M at March 9, 2007 11:51 AM

how can i sign in my high school when i cant what other website can i use or something to log in

Posted by: Hugo Castanon at April 25, 2007 9:53 AM

My email alerts & sounds are enabled. However they do not work. I have even uninstalled Yahoo messenger and reinstalled it and the problem still continues. How do I get the alerts & sounds to work?

Posted by: Joan at September 30, 2007 5:03 PM

I have already done everything that you suggest. Still, I do not have alerts & sounds for my email through messenger.

Posted by: Joan at September 30, 2007 5:05 PM

i am using yahoo messenger with video chat,tex messeging and the problem is ,there is no audio while i'm chating with my wife in the philippines!please assist me in this poblem with the yahoo.messenger!

Posted by: jERRY GEMENIANO at January 19, 2008 2:56 PM

this is problem with my yahoomessenger when i signout my friend called and told me that am still online.
the second one is this when am online i will chat with some people on my messenger list they would not see what am typing and i would not see what they are typing too

Posted by: bolaji at July 23, 2008 8:02 AM

problem occur during opening

Posted by: - at January 29, 2009 8:58 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!