Microsoft has taken the necessary steps to protect end users running Windows Live Toolbars from losing their favorites. Switching off the Favorites synchronization capabilities of Windows Live Toolbars is only a temporary measure, the Redmond company noted, indicating that the full functionality of its toolbar would be restored once a fix was produced and deployed, resolving the issue. According to the software giant, Windows Live Toolbar users started reporting losing Favorites on November 4th, 2009, leading to the temporary disabling of syncing.

“We’ve heard from some customers in the last 24 hours that in some cases, favorites have been removed from the Toolbar when they synced from one or more of their PCs,” stated a member of the Windows Live team on November 5th. “We have investigated, and we want to assure you, that if this is occurring for you, your favorites are still available on SkyDrive. We apologize for this inconvenience and are diligently working on a fix to restore favorites from SkyDrive to your PC.”

At the time of this article, Microsoft had not provided any information on the exact source of the problem, nor on the amount of time that end users will have to go without Favorites syncing. Still, Windows Live Toolbar is just the latest Windows Live component to be hit by glitches requiring a feature to be turned off completely. Earlier this year, Microsoft disabled Windows Live Hotmail attach photo capabilities, and shut down Windows Live Sync. Both Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Sync have been restored to their full functionality the past month.

“In order to prevent any further issues with favorites sync from Toolbar, we have temporarily disabled syncing of favorites for ALL Toolbar customers until we have a fix ready. We will [provide an] update once we deploy a fix and restore the favorites sync service. In the meantime you can sign in to Windows Live SkyDrive to access your favorites. Alternatively, you can also recover your favorites from the Recycle Bin on the PC where they were removed,” the Windows Live team representative added.