Christmas comes early! Microsoft updates Windows 8.1 for Messenger 2011/2012 support

This month’s Update Tuesday brought an early Christmas gift to those who want to use Messenger 2011 or 2012 on Windows 8.1.

Prior to this update being available, when you tried to sign in, you would receive error code 80090004.  After the fix is installed, you will be able to sign in as normal.

The update is contained in the 8.1 December’s rollup update (KB2903939), which contains 18 fixes including KB2906900 (Error “0x80090004 (NTE_BAD_LEN)” occurs when you try to sign in to Windows Live Messenger).

You can either download the update from Windows Update in Windows, or at the Download Center (32-bit, 64-bit), a reboot will be  required to use Messenger again.

Although I quickly managed to write some code to automatically check, download and install the update on machines that need it, it will be a few days before I think it’s ready.  In the meantime, I have withdrawn the version of Messenger Reviver which blocked Messenger 2011/2012 installations on 8.1 and you will just need to manually update Windows 8.1 if Windows isn’t updated automatically.

A special thanks to user Chooky who was the first to notice the update!