You may be interested in this post from the Windows Live Messenger team:
http://messengersays.spaces.live.com...9E!29966.entry
MSN Messenger 7.0.0820 now available for Windows XP
posted by Anand
We’ve seen feedback from several people that they would like to stay on a
version of MSN Messenger. Given that many of us currently on the Windows Live
Messenger team also worked on MSN Messenger for years, we can appreciate the
sentiment. Based on this, we have a new option we hope you’ll like.
For those of you on XP who are passionate about staying on MSN Messenger, we’ve
now released the new, more secure build of MSN Messenger 7.0 build 0820 for
Windows XP, and we recommend you install and use this build (rather than running
MSN Messenger 7.5 on XP in Windows 2000 compatibility mode as we realize some of
you are doing). If you currently have MSN Messenger 7.5 installed, we recommend
you uninstall it via Add/Remove Programs and install MSN Messenger 7.0.0820 from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...4-9505f47bed45
-steve
--
Stephen Boots
MVP Windows Live
Windows Live OneCare Forum Moderator