New Mail and Contact Online notifications not showing up

[eapache]

Running XP Home SP2. I'm using version 8.0.0812.00 of messenger, which I believe is the latest. If there is a newer version, could somebody let me know?

Basically, whenever a contact comes online or I receive new mail, the little box in the bottom right hand corner of the screen fails to show up. I've checked the options window, and those alerts are enabled. (I've had this problem as long as I can remember on this PC, I've only just now gotten around to looking into it.)

I've cleaned up my services in the past, and disabled quite a few, including "Themes". Perhaps the alerts are only available in the XP theme, not classic? Or are the alerts related to another service I may have disabled?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[eapache]

I am starting to believe that it is a system service that I accidentally disabled. I just realized that when I "Safely Remove" my thumb drive on my pc, no little box saying "successfully removed" shows up, and the little green hardware icon stays in my systray instead of disappearing.