I am having problems connecting to MSN. I got this error message: "Signing in to MSN Messenger failed because the service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. 81000314". Many people from my country also can't access MSN so I guess the gateway from my country to US might be down. The "registering dll" method doesn't work for this case. I came across someone in irc who offered the following solution:
For Windows XP Pro or Home users, Go to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and Add in -> 65.54.239.80 messenger.hotmail.com, 65.54.239.80 dp.msnmessenger.akadns.net USING WORDPAD OR NOTEPAD
dp.msnmessenger.akadns.net seems to be a proxy. Is it safe to use the above solution?