MSN Messenger not working!!

[clareclare]

i have problems with getting msn messenger (v.600) to work on my mac ibook laptop. msn was working fine until a week ago when my Airport wireless internet connection was rebooted. everytime i try to sign on it says msn failed because "the service is not available or you may not be connected to the internet."

but the thing is, my internet connection is going fine, i can access the internet!!! everything seems to be the same before the wireless was restarted. i have been using MSN web messenger recently (with no issues) until i figure out the problem. ive also tried usung atrium to access msn but that does not work either, it mentions problems connectiing!!! ive laso tried reinstalling msn but that did not work!

im thinking that something is wrong with my internet settings. i dont know if this has anything to do with it but im not usiing any type of proxy server and i have turned firewall off.

is there anything i can do??? its becoming very frustrating!! and any help would be glady appreciated so can return to my normal msn days!!

 

[Gee]

Does Yahoo or iChat still work? Or is it all of this type of program that's bust?

 

[Osarkon]

The new msn is buggy. i can be online on it, and it will randomly tell me the service is now unavailable and sign me off, and occasionally i'll find out out 5 minutes into a conversation that half of my messages couldn't be delivered.
Back to Adium and Mercury it is for me.

 

[5683565]

MSN Messenger has always done this for me. It constantly just decides that there is no network and kills my connection. Of course, I started using Adium and I never have a disconnection.

Is this some pathetic way to get mac users to use Windows more?

 

[SpookTheHamster]

I'm an aMSN kinda guy. With MSN I'd be talking for ages, then I'd get a buttload of "This message could not be delivered" notices and MSN would freak out and close.

 

[Kelmon]

I believe that the problem may have something to do with legacy networking code from the IE days. The reason why I think this is that when I installed Office:mac I could never get any of the Office applications to connect to the Internet from work where I was behind a proxy server (Entourage would not download images for HTML images and URLs in Word documents would generate an error when selected). For some reason or another I needed to download and install IE 5.2 and discovered that it too would not connect to the Internet at work while all my other Internet-aware applications were finding it quite happily. I eventually discovered that IE 5.2 didn't understand automatic proxy configuration (PAC) files and that I needed to manually configure my HTTP proxy settings in System Preferences > Network. Once I did that not only did IE start working, but all the other Office:mac applications mysteriously started working as well. I've mentioned this to the Mac Business Unit but I don't think they've taken this on-board.

Anyway, I'm having proxy problems with Messenger 6 still. Despite the HTTP proxy settings being manually configured in System Preferences > Network, Messenger still won't connect at work unless I manually configure an HTTP proxy in Messenger's Preferences. Ironically, I can connect to MSN just fine without all this faffing around with Adium. However, since I don't really know anyone that uses MSN I don't much care and continue to just rely on iChat.

 

[clareclare]

thanks all for replying.
im not sure if iChat would work for me... ive never used it. and the thing is ive tried aMSN and Adium and neither worked.

thanks Kelmon. that was a long essay there . do you suggest i change the settings to configure an HTTP proxy?? i go through system preferences--> network-->proxies right? and then what? configure web proxy (HTTP)? i have no idea if thats right...

 

[Kelmon]

Ah, my post was more to illustrate that the Microsoft network code doesn't appear to be very good and is shared across multiple applications. In your particular case I would only add the details of a proxy server if you are actually behind one. For example, at home I am not behind a proxy server and must remove information about my proxy server at work from Messenger in order for it to work. My annoyance is primarily based around this constant adding/deleting proxy server information to make Messenger work for me in my environments but your initial post indicates that you don't have a proxy server so this isn't a solution for you.

Sorry if I gave false hope.

 

[Kelmon]

thanks all for replying.
im not sure if iChat would work for me... ive never used it. and the thing is ive tried aMSN and Adium and neither worked.

Sorry, I missed that part. Are you able to connect to any chat networks? For example, if you have a .mac email address (and you can sign up for a free .mac trial in order to get one without having to pay) then try using it to sign in to iChat. Failing this, try signing up with one of the other networks, like ICQ or Yahoo! as I'd be interested to see if you can use chat applications at all or if it is just MSN that giving problems.