Since I upgraded to Live Messenger 8.0, sometimes it starts automatically
when I start up WinXP Home and signs me in to my Hotmail account all right,
but most of the time (probably about 90% of the time) it doesn't. When I
start Messenger manually it still fails to sign me in, apparently tries for
a couple of minutes and then gives me an error message with Error Code
81000306 and offers to "try and troubleshoot the problem" -- which is always
just a complete waste of time; it green-checks the first six items (up to
Proxy Server) instantly but seems to hang on Key Ports, spends several
minutes trying to do something and then just fails with another error
message.
I can still get to my e-mail by going to Hotmail.com and signing in
manually, which is somewhat less convenient. What's the problem with Live
Messenger? I don't recall having this problem with previous versions, and
I've been using Hotmail for several years. I have a Hotmail Plus account, if
that makes any difference.