Recently, all my Windows Vista & Windows 7 machines started displaying errors saying that Live Mesh had crashed and needed to be shut down. Unfortunately, the errors wouldn’t stop occurring even when the program was exited and the error cleared.

It was thought that IE9 beta and Live Mesh beta don’t like to play well together, but I started experiencing this way before I ever put IE9 on my Windows 7  laptop.

Instead, I’m more inclined to believe that Microsoft is phasing out the old Live Mesh and trying to get people to move over to the new Live Sync/Live Mesh 2011, as part of the Windows Live Essentials package.

Either way, if you had the same errors as I did, then you’re also probably having trouble uninstalling Live Mesh beta from your computer as well – and Live Sync/Mesh 2011 won’t install until Mesh beta is gone, and there aren’t any pending system reboots/uninstalls still in the registry.

Well, here’s how to Uninstall Live Mesh beta from your system…

To remove Live Mesh Beta…

If you can’t uninstall Live Mesh beta the normal way  (through the Control Panel > Programs & Features) you’ll need to disable/delete 3 things: 2 registry entries, and 1 service.

Live Mesh Remote Desktop service

1. Click on the Start menu orb, and type “services.msc” in the search box (or open a Run prompt and type it there)
2. Scroll through until you find “Live Mesh Remote Desktop” in the service list
3. Right-click on it, and choose Properties.
4. Change its Startup type from “Automatic” to “Disabled”
5. Stop the service.

Windows Registry Entries

1. Click on the Start menu orb, and type “regedit” in the search box  (or open a Run prompt and type it there)
2. There are two entries to delete:
   1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\<your SID>\Products
      • Find the folder named “9D1E4BCD781B45B479E1418784C5A935” beneath the Products directory and delete it.
   2. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Installer\Products
      • Find the folder named “9D1E4BCD781B45B479E1418784C5A935” beneath the Products directory and delete it.

Reboot the system…

Disabling the service will prevent it from starting up with your computer, and deleting both registry entries will remove it from the Control Panel > Programs & Features list. Once you have rebooted, this should let you install the Live Mesh 2011 software.

Setting up Live Mesh 2011

Once you’re done installing, you now have to log in with your Windows Live ID, and choose the folders you want to sync again.

You’ll want to install Live Mesh 2011 on all your computers on which you previously used Live Mesh beta, and sync the folders from their respective master copies accordingly. In addition to peer syncing, the files are now stored on Skydrive instead of the Live Mesh beta desktop. This is the same location that Office Live files and Windows Live Mail attachments are stored, and you’ll be able to access all your files (sync’d, saved, and uploaded) from this web site. In addition to desktop files & folders being sync’d you can now include Internet Explorer Favorites and your Microsoft Office styles, templates custom dictionary and email signatures.

Once your other computers have the software installed, be sure to navigate to the Remote page in the application, and choose “Allow remote connections to this computer” in order to use the Live Mesh 2011 Remote [Desktop] Connection feature.