A fix for Windows Live Messenger sign-in issues
About a month ago, Brandon LeBlanc wrote about his problems signing in to the Windows Live Messenger network. Last week, it began happening to me. I was able to install the Messenger client software on another computer and sign in, but on my main system, even uninstalling and reinstalling wouldn’t fix the problem. And Brandon says he’s still getting “tons of comments” left on the original post.
Yesterday, I sent a note to support and got the suggested fix within a few hours. Open Regedit and delete the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSNMessenger\Policies
After doing that, I was able to sign in again. If you’re having this problem, maybe the same fix will work for you.
Update 8-Feb-2007: OK, I’ve now closed the comments on this post. If you’re still having problems after following the advice in this thread and in the comments (in particular, see comment #79), this is not the place to complain about it. Call or e-mail Microsoft support. That is, after all, how I got the information originally posted here.
83 Responses to A fix for Windows Live Messenger sign-in issues
Thank you soooooo much!
My wife was having this problem for a few days. Deleting that reg key worked perfectly.
Why use Live Messenger? I have found it much more preferable to use a multi-protocol IM client–Gaim. Sure, I have the occasional problem with connecting to services (not as much as it was in earlier versions), but I certainly don’t have some off reason why it refuses to connect to the service.
Just a thought.
Haha – Brent, your comment is exactly what I was going to say. My wife’s messenger died a couple of days ago, and I had no idea why. Thanks Ed for the timely info!
Thank you so much! I was so frustrated at my messenger, and Mercury just wasn’t the same. Thank you thank you!
I wish I’d seen that solution a little bit sooner. I had 3 different Windows Live accounts (you know, the ones that used to be called “Passport” accounts–or something like that) and two of them wouldn’t sign in but the third would. Really strange.
Uninstalling and resinstalling didn’t work. And I found out that none of my System Restore points worked–for whatever reasons. So I reimaged the hard disk with a 3 week old image (my routine is to reimage once a week, but as a world class procratinator…) and that fixed it. Of course that meant I had to copy all the backed up mail, docs and whatnot back from my second hard drive. I didn’t email MSN support–guess I should have tried that…
Thanks!!!!!
I having this problem about a week now.After i find this linfo take me a min. to fix it.
THANK YOU ED !!!!!
AWESOME!
THANKS!
Thank you soooo much!
It’s works….but what do you delete…i mean why is ‘contacts.msn.com’ in regedit????
thank you for that fix, it worked in less than a minute.
thanks
You rock!
bah! it didn’t work for me. i even tried deleting the whole MSNmessenger folder.
any other ideas?
I am having a problem with msn messenger 8.0 it logs me in and then freezes saying program has no response….is there anyway to fix this?
can you please tell me what is regedit and where to find it ?
Kool, Regedit is the Windows Registry Editor. if you don’t know what Regedit is, then you shouldn’t be messing with it. Seriously. You should go to the bookstore, flip through some books on Windows, and look for the section that includes Regedit. Then read about it.
Beth, I have no idea of how to fix MSN Messenger 8.0.
Trav, have you tried contacting support? That’s what I did, and they got right back to me.
Thank you very much for sharing this info. I too suffered from a sudden signin issue on a single machine of a network and deleting this key did the trick!
Thanks for the help. This fix worked like a charm for me as well.
I’m not sure how the original problem occured in the first place. But about a week ago, when I attempted to log in to Windows Live Messenger, it would just sit there and never login. The default Messenger 4.7 worked fine, but Windows Live Messenger just would not work. Thanks for the input!
Well, I guess my installation must be different because I have no such “Policies” key at all under the MSNMessenger in the HKCU area in Regedit. And to be sure I also looked at the HKLM area but nada.
I have a “stringvalue” (if that’s the right name in English) with the value of “CachedPolicy0″ with some figures in it but that’s all.
I have the latest Live Messenger 8.0.0812.00 so I wonder what’s up!
Thanks.
I had been having this problem ever since I installed IE7 a couple of days ago. I was pulling my hair out. THANK YOU for the fix. Worked like a charm!
Thanks alot man. that was very helpfull.
WORKS GREAT! THANKS