In the past, I have looked at a log that is stored on my computer that is a history of every person that users on my computer have chatted with or IM'd and what was said. I remember that I accessed this folder through "My Computer" and it seems that there was some administrative folder that had these files in it. For the life of me, I cannot remember how to do that... can someone give me step by step instructions?

Thanks! :p

People always leave out VITAL information in their questions about computers. You wonder where your chat logs are and don't tell what chat program you're using, or what type of computer OS... nothing.

*sigh*

Ok, lecture over. Here are some simple "where to find":

Exact Locations of Specific IM Logs
Here is a brief list of where you can locate IM conversations stored on your hard drive:

• Adium: On your Mac, Adium IM logs are stored at User\Library\Application Support\Adium 2.0\Users\Default\ByObject
• AIM 6.0 and above: By default, IM logging is off. If logging is enabled, find these conversations in My Documents\AIMLogger.
• Google Talk: Unless you or the client user has turned off IM logging, these conversations can be located by clicking “Chats” in the main client window. A list of saved conversations can then be accessed.
• iChat: On your Mac, iChat IM logs are stored in the \User\iChats\ folder.
• Trillian: IM logs can be located at C:\Program Files\Trillian\users\default\logs.
• Pidgin: C:\Users\myuser\AppData\Roaming\.purple\logs
  or
  /etc/purple/logs
• Skype: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Skype\<userid>\*.dbb
  
  Also look at : chatsync\<nn>\*.dat