Article: Since chat logs were saved locally in MSN/Windows Live Messenger, you will need to have the same hard drive where the programs were installed or the chat logs were saved. Furthermore, you will need to have enabled chat logging in the MSN/Windows Live Messenger client. If you had not done so previously, then there will be no chat logs to recover. When enabling chat logging, users could select the destination folder for where the logs were saved. If you had set that manually, then that is the folder you will need to navigate to. Otherwise the default location is:   C:\Users\<username>\Documents\My Received Files\<username>\History for Windows Vista, 7, or 8.  C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\My Received Files\<username>\History for Windows XP. Old MSN/Windows Live Messenger chat logs are stored in a .xml filetype. These can be read by a web browser. Open them with right-click > Open With…  and select your preferred web browser from the list.
What is a summary of what this article is about?
Determine if your chat logs still exist. Locate the folder containing chat logs. Open a chat file with your preferred web browser.