I GET BOOTED WHENEVER I START MESSENGER,
AND I'M NOT EVEN IN THE CHAT ROOM YET.  WHAT SHOULD I DO?

What you have there is what is called an "offline boot code."  What happened was while you were offline, a booter sent you a private message (PM) containing boot codes. Hence, the next time you run Yahoo! Messenger, it will download all offline messages -- legitimate or not -- and will start crashing as soon as it encounters an offline boot code, or when you start viewing your offline messages.  When this happens, you have no choice but to delete those messages manually.

Open the My Computer icon in the desktop and navigate your way to the C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\StoredIM folder.  Offline messages are stored as numerically named files ending with an HST file extension.  Unfortunately, there is no way to determine which offline message is legitimate and which contain boot codes since these files are encrypted or encoded, so, you probably have to delete them all.

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