I have a Dell laptop with XP Pro. Yesterday, when I tried to type a message in an IM window, nothing happened. No text was displayed & it was like the window was inactive! Any ideas?

it was like the window was inactive

Do you get any flashing cursor at all when you click inside the IM Box ?

No nothing at all.

Just an update. Restarted the daughters laptop last evening & the problem went away!

Glad its sorted

The problem has resurfaced. It is like the window is inactive. I uninstalled IM and downloaded a new version and still have the same problem.

When the Instant Messenger problem appears, do you get similar problems with any other applications? For example, if you run Microsoft Word or Notepad or something with a text window constantly, see if you can type in that when Instant Messenger stops letting you type a message.

I am thinking along the lines of 'Is IM freezing because your PC is suddenly going flat out doing something else in the background, i.e. running a virus or spyware routine?'

I was on vacation last week and once again, the problem fixed itself!

Just for info, all other applications worked fine!

THE PROBLEM IS BACK! And it seems to be only with IM. Yahoo Messenger works fine as does all other text (Wordpad, notepad, Word) applications! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

PC problems can be grouped into about 5 categories:

1. Very easy - the novice user just didn't know how to do it so I gave an answer straight away;
2. Easy - IT professionals / expert users recognise this as a common problem - I told the user how to fix it;
3. Average - Gave a few different suggestions for things that might fix it and one of them solved the problem;
4. Weird - Any intermittent problem that has no obvious explanation or clues of where to start;
5. Act Of God.

Your problem currently falls into category 4 !!

When was the last time that you connected to the Internet and used IM with NO problems? Can you think of anything at all that's changed since then? ............

Was the laptop in a different place?
Was the laptop plugged into a different phone line?
Did you have more or less Internet Explorer / Outlook Express / other program screens open?
Did you connect to the Internet with a different ISP?
Were you chatting online to a different person?
Was it a different time of day?

Did IM not work as soon as you started up the laptop and tried to use it for the first time over the weekend? Or did it work for a bit and then stop working half-way through a conversation?

I would suggest seeing if there's a newer version of AOL Instant Messenger available. Updating it should replace some of the files that it uses and, if you're lucky, might just happen to solve the problem.