Windows Live Messenger: Unable to Connect Error 80040200 Fix

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I stumbled across this fix via a web search in the Live Messenger Blog about a different error code. It worked for me on Windows Vista.

1.) Close Messenger. Go into Task Manager and ensure that the “msnmsgr.exe” process is not there. If it is, kill the process.

2.) Navigate to C:\Users\<YourUserName>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts and delete the entire contents of the folder.

3.) Restart Windows Live Messenger. Voila!

There is another issue I found where the standalone installer for Messenger fails with a message like “could not open key…”. One fix for this is to navigate to the C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger folder and DELETE the msnmsgr.exe executable if it is there.

ReallyReallyDumb Exception Messages Department

 

I think it was Donn Felker who first tweeted about this, but I didn’t believe it until I got one myself:

 

NullableObject

Go Figure!

Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous2:44 AM

    thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. 5:05 PM

    Yikes!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous3:29 AM

    Yes, works, thankx....

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown6:28 PM

    nicely done. worked great. any idea of what causes this?

    ReplyDelete
  5. peterbromberg6:39 PM

    @Bill,
    There is a contacts.edb contacts database that can get corrupted. By deleting all this, you are forcing Messenger to regenerate this data fresh.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Shawn C.6:45 PM

    BTW, I neglected to point out that I've done this fix three times now. After deleting (as per the instructions), Windows Live Mess. works fine for about a day.

    I am certainly not going to apply this fix every day... so unless MS fixes this, I will need to revert back to the older Messenger.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous11:52 AM

    You can just restart MSN and it works I was afraid all my settings would go so I just restarted it and it worked.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Dolphin5:05 PM

    Thank you thank you thank you thank you! That was making me nuts and yours was the fastest and simplest solution. Much obliged!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Shawn C.6:39 PM

    Does anyone know WHY this is occurring?

    I never had a problem until I upgraded to this version of Messenger. Peter's 'fix' does work, however, it is temporary. It seems that Messenger fails every few days. I can restart it but it is only a matter of time before it fails again!

    Microsoft's support doesn't even acknowledge that this is a common issue!

    Anyone?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous10:11 PM

    Don't know what happened to get into this problem, but thanks so much for the step by step - worked like a charm!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Stylianee 4:33 AM

    thanx a lot for helping with stupid msn! I was stuck like this for days, and now...miracle ;)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Unknown1:04 PM

    THANK S ALL THE BEST this realy works

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous1:05 PM

    thank s all the best

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous10:58 PM

    Thank you!!! it works with my pc

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous10:11 PM

    Great. Do not know how to thank you. Nice clear and step by step instructions. Worked perfect :)

    ReplyDelete
  16. Unknown8:29 PM

    Thank you. It worked! Genius. Pretty straight forward! Thanks!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Anonymous4:58 PM

    I can follow it up to step 2 where it says what files to go into, but my appdata isn't in our user folder

    What do I do???

    ReplyDelete
  18. MWBidwell8:29 AM

    Worked in Vista. I'm back up!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Anonymous1:14 PM

    thanks a lot
    happy i didn't have to reinstall wlm

    ReplyDelete
  20. Mohammad9:23 AM

    Please check you system datetime. For some reason my system datetime was set in 2 months ahead(I have young twins so I am not surprized). But Peters fix didn't work for me. I did go on that folder and deleted the file. When I tried to log in, I was getting the error and that's when I noticed the "date" . I fixed the date on the system and it logged in just fine.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Anonymous12:44 PM

    Can you explain for all us internet thicko's (i.e me) how to get to that folder where u have to delete everything
    Thanks
    x

    ReplyDelete
  22. peterbromberg12:52 PM

    Read Item #2 in the post. "YourUserName" is the name of your user profile on the machine.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Mohammad1:46 AM

    Peter, I did put this in my blog here.

    http://mohammad-hoque.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous8:41 AM

    Thank you so much. Your fix worked perfectly in Vista!

    ReplyDelete
  25. Unknown6:39 AM

    Thank you!!
    works perfectly!!

    Windows Vista

    ReplyDelete
  26. Ruth2:00 PM

    Thank you so much! This was exactly what i needed to do!!

    ReplyDelete
  27. Paul Lantz10:21 PM

    thanks for solving my problem

    ReplyDelete
  28. Mel3:44 AM

    I tried for 3 months to get my messenger to work. I tried every solution. It went from a messed up error code to the 80040200 error code. I tried what you said and the first thing out of my mouth was no fricking way... it worked!!! I am very impressed... thank you! Your solution was very quick and effective!

    ReplyDelete
  29. Anonymous4:10 PM

    thankyou,, lifesaver

    ReplyDelete
  30. Anonymous12:34 AM

    I followed the instructions and it worked for me. Thank you very much!

    ReplyDelete
  31. Anonymous8:39 AM

    Followed the steps and it corrected my IM. Don't know what happened. I never close my IM and it has been working with no issues for months. Oh well, that's microsoft for you.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Anonymous2:14 PM

    Didn't work, i did everything you said but when i tried to sign in i got error code 8007007e. This has been going on for 7 months now and i'm about to throw my computor out the window. HELP PLEASE?

    ReplyDelete
  33. Anonymous5:02 PM

    It really worked! thank you so much :D

    ReplyDelete
  34. Anonymous8:11 AM

    thanks, I was afraid that I might lose my contacts or previous info but I didn't. Worked Great!

    ReplyDelete

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