Remove Ads from Yahoo Messenger

Users of Yahoo Messenger 8.0 or 9.0 notice a very annoying animated ad at the bottom of the main window. Messenger has all the best features, with lots of advertisements and animated ads. If you don’t like the ads and wants no ads on Yahoo! Messenger window.

How to get rid of the ads?

1. Close Yahoo Messenger.



2. Copy the following code to a notepad file and save the file with anyname.bat extension.

Notes:

Please note that if you run Yahoo Messenger from a FAT32 disk, this fix disables some features from Yahoo Messenger, like chat rooms and the plug-in manager. NTFS is the standard file system used in Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, so it's likely that you won't see these limitations if you use a recent version of windows.
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@ECHO OFF
TITLE Remove ads from Yahoo Messenger 8-9

ATTRIB -R "%PROGRAMFILES%\Yahoo!\Messenger\Cache\urls.xml"
ECHO "" >"%PROGRAMFILES%\Yahoo!\Messenger\Cache\urls.xml"
ATTRIB +R "%PROGRAMFILES%\Yahoo!\Messenger\Cache\urls.xml"
cacls "%PROGRAMFILES%\Yahoo!\Messenger\Cache\urls.xml" /E /P %username%:N

SET CONTENTPATH=""
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 SET CONTENTPATH="*"

> %TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO REGEDIT4
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO.
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\Pager\YUrl]
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO "Messenger Ad"="*"
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO "Webcam Upload Ad"="*"
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO "Webcam Viewer Ad"="*"
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO "Webcam Viewer Ad Big"="*"
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO "Webcam Viewer Ad Medium"="*"
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO "Change Room Banner"="*"
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO "Conf Adurl"="*"
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO "Chat Adurl"="*"
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO "Y Content"=%CONTENTPATH%
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\Pager\Locale]
>>%TEMP%.\noYMads.reg ECHO "Enable Messenger Ad"="0"
REGEDIT /S %TEMP%.\noYMads.reg
DEL %TEMP%.\noYMads.reg
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The bat file edits most registry values related to the ads in Yahoo Messenger from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Yahoo\pager\YUrl, replacing the data with a dummy asterisk. Here's the list of string values:

Messenger Ad
Webcam Upload Ad
Webcam Viewer Ad
Webcam Viewer Ad Big
Webcam Viewer Ad Medium
Change Room Banner
Conf Adurl
Chat Adurl



The patch also makes the file C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\Cache\urls.xml read-only and it revokes all the permissions for the file, but only for NTFS disks.

If you install new versions of Yahoo Messenger, you'll have to repeat the steps above, as Yahoo setup rewrites the registry entries. New versions will most likely make removing the ads more difficult or even impossible.