I've been using Messenger for a number of years like most people, but stopped about a year ago due to connection problems through my Mac. It worked fine for a couple of months, and then one day it decided to go on strike and refuse to connect whilst shouting "sign in to microsoft messenger failed because the service is not available".

Absolute bollocks, I've tried all sorts of things to solve the problem and don't know of anyone who has solved the issue.

Does anyone have a viable solution?

It's not that I want to use messenger specifically, I just don't want to switch to another instant messenger service and then not be able to communicate with contacts using MSN.

If the problem can't be resolved, does anyone know if using 'Adium' will let me communicate with MSN users?

I greatly appreciate your response to this topic, as it has probably been discussed before. Cheers lads/ladies.

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I shaved my ba**s for this?

Turns out, Adium uses the existing accounts from all instant messengers, therefore it still doesn't work. It might be time to throw the rope up.

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I shaved my ba**s for this?

No, what this says is that you should get off your ass and fix the problem, rather than just trying change client.

In all probability, you just need to open up certain ports on the machine that's hosting your internet connection.

I can't give more specific advice, since how you'd do it depends on your network setup and I'm basically totally unfamiloar with Macs, but here's the appropriate Microsoft support page.

Failing that, you could use a web messenger service.