Fixing an issue with Windows Live Toolbar and Favorites Sync
22 Dec 2008Originally posted on my old MSDN blog
I’ve always used the Windows Live Toolbar to sync favorites across my multiple machines, so it was a bit disappointing when the previous beta removed that functionality with the demise of http://favorites.live.com
That meant I was pleased to see the service had been added to the latest beta of the toolbar in the new Windows Live Essentials pack, but then very frustrated when it failed to install properly on a couple of my PCs.
However after a bit of playing about I stumbled on a fix, so I thought I’d share the solution here as I couldn’t find any other references online.
After setting up the sync on my work laptop, after what I thought was a successful install on my home PC there was no option for setting up the sync in the left hand side of Toolbar options - see the picture below:
I had no idea what the problem was, and was going to try the trusted uninstall/reinstall route, but when I went to the uninstall control panel I realised I still had the old Favorites toolbar add-in installed:
On one PC simply uninstalling the “Windows Live Favorites for Windows Live Toolbar” did the trick, and the sync options magically appeared.
On another PC I had to reinstall the toolbar too, but then finally I was in sync across all my PCs.
I hope you found that helpful!
Update (23/12/2008): There has been some discussion on Liveside about this issue that you should check out. One thing I didn’t know is that the Favorites sync isn’t available in all markets at the moment.
Update 2 (18/02/2009): I’ve upgraded a couple of machines to Windows 7 and on one of them I just couldn’t get the sync to appear. They were both fresh installs so the issue above didn’t fix it. I also made sure everything on the failing machine was “en-us”, but to no avail.
Actually I was getting frustrated with the way the sync wouldn’t handle deletes properly, so I’ve given up and am just using the superior Live Mesh to sync my favorites directory.