MSN Messenger Problem...

[fullyhyperlite]

Ok. I've had a bit of trouble since i got this laptop (Mac OS X, Version 10.3.9) off of my auntie. Trouble being that she came over one night to help me organize things, accidentally deleted (or rather "poofed") my user folders. I still don't know exactly what happens to files when i grab them and drop them on the desktop and they have these cartoon like clouds and they "disappear". (whats that?)

So anyway, everything worked fine up until when my user folders were deleted and now im having some trouble getting MSN to run again.
I currently have version 4.0.0 from the microsoft 2004 package. I load it up and it says that a newer version is available and must be downloaded if i want to be able to use MSN.
The file then proceeds to download...but then this message come up:

The file "Messenger.bin" does not appear to be compressed or encoded. The application "Stuffit Expander.app" might be able to open this file. Would you like to try opening the file using "StuffIt Expander.app"?

I have then clicked "Try" twice and nothing happens, except for the message reappearing.

I have been through this process 3 times and honestly i have no idea. Any help would be MUCH appreciated!!

 

[Egidio]

About the poofing, it sounds like all you're doing is removing items from the Dock or from a window. If that's the case, the originals are still on your Mac. The Dock only keeps a shortcut for those documents and applications. The same goes for a Finder window. Those lists you see on the left-hand side can be rebuilt. Just find what you want and drag it there again. On the Dock, you drag applications on the left or top (depending where you keep the Dock).

As for the user folders, are you talking about the real thing? In other words, when you look at your hard drive, there should be a folder called Users. Is yours not in there?

You might want to do some regular maintenance on your Mac to see if it improves its performance. According to Apple, occasionally the user permissions associated with files or applications become damaged, which can prevent a file or application from working as it should. See this article. So, you might want to try to run Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility). Open the application, select the mounted volume for your hard drive and click "repair disk permissions."