Messengers AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ Backup

Instant messages are text messages which you can send to other people who are online when you are. Your message is delivered immediately, as well as the person you sent the message to can respond immediately-just as in a face-to-face conversation. You can do much more than just send text messages to other people. You can have audio and video conversations, place a phone call from your computer to almost anywhere in the world, hold an online meeting, play games, share programs that are installed on your computer, as well as more. The messenger is a special software program to send and receive instant messages over the Internet.

There are currently two dominating messengers on the Internet: MSN Messenger from Microsoft Corporation, as well as ICQ Messenger from ICQ Networks. The latter has a longer life and a wider spread in Europe. Other messengers include Yahoo! Messenger, AIM (AOL) Messenger, Trillian, as well as more. A simple messenger enables you to send instant messages to anybody on your contact list, see when your friends are online, share photos and files easily, use expressive emoticons to quickly communicate your mood, page a contacts mobile phone, make worldwide phone calls, receive alerts about local traffic, news, weather, sports, as well as travel, get out instantly which you have a new e-mail in your Inbox.

Often times you are interested in having a backup copy of your message database and your messengers contact list, to be able to recover your contacts after a computer crash, a virus or method re-installation. Backing up your messenger data can be somewhat a challenging task. The recent releases of most messengers usually keep its data either under the folder they are installed in or under one of the user profile folder subfolders. Typically, you can start your search from:

C:Program Files

C:Documents and SettingsUser Name

Older releases of AIM (AOL), Yahoo!, MSN, as well as ICQ messengers keep their settings at the following registry paths:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMirabilisICQDefaultPrefs

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftMessengerService

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareAmerica OnlineAOL Instant Messenger (TM)

in various registry variables. For example, ICQ stores the path to the message store in Database variable. Additionally, UIN Dir variable keeps track of the directory with the ICQ contact list (ICQ contacts). You can back up messenger data either through hand or automatically.