Well its Monday and to kickoff the new content of migraineheartache. I thought’d I feature something that annoyed me for the longest time and I’m sure annoys plenty of you. This tweak allows you to increase (or decrease) the maximum number of buddies allowed on AOL Instant Messenger from the default of 200 to any number up to 999.

Open your registry by going to Start > Run… > type ‘regedit’ > OK and then find the key listed below.

Edit the exisiting value named MaxBuddies and set it to the required maximum number of buddies. The default is 200.

Restart AOL Instant Messenger for the change to take effect.

Note: This does not work with older v4.3.x clients which will automatically change the value back to 160.

Registry Settings
User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\America Online\AOL Instant Messenger ™\CurrentVersion\Buddy]
Value Name: MaxBuddies
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: 1-999 (decimal)

Disclaimer: Modifying the registry can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. I cannot guarantee that problems resulting from modifications to the registry can be solved. Use the information provided at your own risk.

Just a thought: Increasing the number all the way to 999 can have serious performance issues even on high-end machines, do this at your own risk. I’ve found that pumping it up to 300 or even 400 seems to be alright. Any problems or anything drop a line anytime at brasonmyguitar@gmail.com Well till next time-

-b