yahoo messenger not connecting

Pidgin probably disabled your YIM account (it happens sometimes if your connection is terminated unexpectedly or something went wrong on Yahoo server).

Try going to Accounts > Enable account > and enable your YIM account.

It does not show an icon for YIM so I can enable that account. It put the screenname for my YIM account under AIM, so of course, it does not work. I tried going under advanced options and changing it, but that doesn't work either.(perhaps I am not doing it correctly?) this is what I got on the debug window when I tried.

(15:05:05) g_log: purple_presence_is_online: assertion `presence != NULL' failed
(15:05:11) util: Writing file accounts.xml to directory /home/cara/.purple
(15:05:11) util: Writing file /home/cara/.purple/accounts.xml
(15:05:27) util: Writing file accounts.xml to directory /home/cara/.purple
(15:05:27) util: Writing file /home/cara/.purple/accounts.xml
(15:05:27) util: Writing file blist.xml to directory /home/cara/.purple
(15:05:27) util: Writing file /home/cara/.purple/blist.xml
(15:05:51) oscar: Scheduling destruction of FLAP connection of type 0x0007
(15:05:51) oscar: Destroying oscar connection of type 0x0007. Disconnect reason is 2
(15:05:51) oscar: Disconnected. Code is 0x0000 and msg is

I tried again and got this:

(15:07:35) util: Writing file accounts.xml to directory /home/cara/.purple
(15:07:35) util: Writing file /home/cara/.purple/accounts.xml
(15:07:35) util: Writing file blist.xml to directory /home/cara/.purple
(15:07:35) util: Writing file /home/cara/.purple/blist.xml
(15:12:03) oscar: Scheduling destruction of FLAP connection of type 0x000d
(15:12:03) oscar: Destroying oscar connection of type 0x000d. Disconnect reason is 4
(15:12:03) oscar: Disconnected. Code is 0x0000 and msg is Connection reset by peer

I appreciate your assistance.

I'm not sure what went wrong with your Pidgin installation, but try doing the following: quit Pidgin > go to your home folder and delete ".purple" folder (where Pidgin stores your personal settings).

This folder is hidden so if you are using Nautilus, you'll need to press Ctrl+H to view hidden files and folders.

After you have deleted that folder, start Pidgin and try to configure your YIM account. I hope it works for you ;-)

I tried it; same problem. YIM does not show up. Oddly the .purple folder dissappeared but did not show in the trash folder. Not sure if that means anything

The debug window output you pasted seems to be consistent with a bad username and password error on AIM. Of course, that's not your real problem.

Open the debug window (Help->Debug Window), then open the Plugins dialog (Tools->Plugins). This will make Pidgin re-probe its plugins, thus showing some useful debugging information. At this point you should be able to type yahoo in the text box at the top of the debug window and click Filter. When that happens you'll see yahoo-specific messages, including any plugin probe messages or errors relating to the yahoo plugin. Please provide *that* debug output.

Something else which may possibly be related; when I sign in to yahoo (mail or my yahoo) I check the "keep me signed in for 2 weeks" box. It works on other computors I use but not this one. On this one I have to sign in every time I get online.

Thanks John,
I just copied and pasted what is shown at the 'warning' level to condense the info:

(17:02:07) plugins: /usr/lib/purple-2/liboscar.so is not usable because the 'purple_init_plugin' symbol could not be found. Does the plugin call the PURPLE_INIT_PLUGIN() macro?
(17:02:07) plugins: /usr/lib/purple-2/tcl.so is not loadable: libtcl8.4.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
(17:02:07) plugins: /usr/lib/purple-2/libjabber.so is not usable because the 'purple_init_plugin' symbol could not be found. Does the plugin call the PURPLE_INIT_PLUGIN() macro?

That doesn't relate to yahoo at all. As I said, filter the debug window on yahoo and show that output.

When I click on filter, the window is completely blank

Is there a libyahoo.so in /usr/lib/purple-2/ ?

I'm having trouble finding /usr/lib/purple-2/

No there is not a libyahoo.so in /usr/lib/purple-2/ ?

The missing libyahoo.so is why you can't see yahoo in the protocols list. Try reinstalling the libpurple0 package.

I'm not sure if I did this right; It doesn't look like it did anything.
This is what I typed into a terminal:
sudo apt-get install libpurple0

And this is what it did:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
libpurple0 is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 12 not upgraded."

I am not very computer savvy, but I can follow directions :) So please bear with me.

Thanks John Bailey, that solved my question.

yahoo: 97 bytes to read, rxlen is 117
Yahoo Service: 0x57 Status: 1
 yahoo status: 0

 This is all I get when I try to open my Hoo