Following the popularity of ‘Removal of Internet Ads using Opera‘ article, and the followup to that article, I have prepared a simple method through which you can remove the advertisements seen in Yahoo! Messenger 8. This is done using a small registry tweak. As always, having a backup of the files before you proceed would be an intelligent choice.

Removing the Ad from the bottom of the main Yahoo! Messenger window

1. Open “%Programfiles%\Yahoo!\Messenger\YahooMessenger.exe” file into a Hex Editor.
2. Locate the offset 3981AC and change the string “enabled” to anything you want.
3. Save and Exit.

Remove Ads from chat window, webcam, etc.

1. Open notepad and paste the following code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\yahoo\pager\YUrl]
“First Login Beacon”=”*”
“Tutorials”=”*”
“Messenger Help”=”*”
“Voice General Help”=”*”
“Change Room Banner”=”*”
“Address Book”=”*”
“Finance Disclaimer”=”*”
“Messenger Ad”=”*”
“Chat Adurl”=”*”
“Calendar Alert Ad URL”=”*”
“Conf Adurl”=”*”
“Mail Alert Ad URL”=”*”
“News Alert Ad URL”=”*”
“Personals Alert Ad URL”=”*”
“Stock Alert Ad URL”=”*”
“Webcam Viewer Ad Medium”=”*”
“Webcam Viewer Ad Big”=”*”
“Webcam Viewer Ad”=”*”
“Webcam Upload Ad”=”*”
“Chat Transition Ad”=”*”
“N2Phone Adurl”=”*”
“Webcam Viewer Ad Bid”=”*”

2. Save the file with any name and give the extension as .REG
3. Run the file and merge it into the Windows Registry.

Thats it, you have now gotten rid of those annoying ads in Yahoo! Messenger. Other ways to avoid those ads is to use a different IM client like Trillian or Gaim.

I am going to publish another article on how to remove those Ads using a small software. So I recommend you subscribe to my feeds so that you will be notified when I publish another easy way to remove those ads.

Update: March 16th, 2007; Durerca has posted an excellent step-by-step tutorial with screenshots on how to manually remove those pesky ads. You can check it out here.