Microsoft released an update for Windows Live Essentials 2011 two weeks ago, bumping the version number to 15.4.3555.0308. However, as we mentioned in a follow-up post, the Windows Live team did not mention what was changed in this updated build, especially after almost 9 months of silence since the last update. Finally, thanks to the heads up from Picturepan2 @ LiveSino.net, a Microsoft representative has detailed what had been changed in the most recent update, dubbed “QFE3” (Quick Fix Engineering), on Microsoft Answers:
This update improves performance in Windows Live Essentials 2011. The following list describes these changes:
- Setup: During installation, the splash screen loads faster after user accepts UAC prompt.
- Windows Live Mail: When users click on photos within Windows Live Mail that are hosted on SkyDrive or Facebook, instead of using the Client Album Viewer to view the photos, a browser opens the web album viewer for that application.
- Windows Live Messenger: Fixes the Messenger sign-in error "0x84cb000c" and the Messenger crash or hang when accepting/declining a pending invitation. When users click on photos that are hosted on SkyDrive or Facebook, instead of using the Client Album Viewer to view the photos, a browser opens the web album viewer for that application.
- Windows Live Movie Maker: Fixes error “80004003” where Windows Live Movie Maker can’t open project files. Fixes setup failure error “80040705” and error “87260103” for when Movie Maker becomes unresponsive, hangs when adding WMV video files.
- Windows Live Photo Gallery: Microsoft updated authorization method required to publish to Flickr and Facebook. Microsoft updated authorization method to communicate with Bing Maps services for geo-tagging.
For those of you who may have forgotten, Microsoft released the original Windows Live Essentials 2011 on September 30, 2010, and subsequently released QFE1 back in December 2010, and QFE2 in July 2011, making this the third QFE update for the application suite.
All users using Windows Live Essentials 2009 and above (running on Windows Vista and above) will be prompted to upgrade. This update is optional initially, however will become compulsory after a period of time. Users of Windows Live Essentials 2009 on Windows XP are not affected. You can get the update now by visiting: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/essentials-home