I am having a great deal of difficulty tracking down information matching the symptoms of this problem. A friend is using yahoo IM at work, and I am able to talk to her at first just fine. But after a few minutes, she cannot read messages I send. I think if she logs out and back in, she can read them, and her messages are still getting out. A little while after that, it seems like her outgoing messages are being blocked because they stop coming rather suddenly. I directed her to web based yahoo messenger, but that didn't seem to work which leads me to believe the admin there has placed some restrictions on it.

Does this sound like firewall behaviour? Why would messages get through for a while and then get blocked? It doesn't seem like it's too difficult to put yahoo IM servers on the block list to deny access all together so I would have expected it to simply not work.

Is installing squid proxy on my server for her to access web messenger a solution? I tried it with a free http browser proxy service but it seems java was an issue and suspect squid might have similar limitations.

It sounds like her system has a bandwidth throttle on it. But the garbled messages sounds a bit more like just a flaky server at her location.

Is it possible to try using IM from another source like AOL (GAIM OR AIM OR Pidgeon)? If the problem originates in her IT department it will not matter what IM you use.

Just an FYI: GAIM and Pidgin are multi-protocol instant messenger clients, with GAIM being the outdated predecessor of Pidgin. AIM is both a protocol and a client (sort of).

my thought after your replies is to try using an entirely different protocol.

Or she could try one of the web-based IM handlers like Meebo... that should work around most blocks

My Yahoo msgr9us.exe after successfully installing using wine, I cannot sign in although my id and pw are correct.
It gives me an error message 'sign-in-problem'.
I try many times but still the same problem.
Any help to this problem is very much appreciated.