Issues signing in to Messenger today

Within the last 24-hours or so, a handful of users have let me know that they haven’t been able to sign into Messenger and are receiving error code 80072efd (which means quite simply, “can’t connect”).

This new problem is related to earlier changes Microsoft has made to push Messenger to HTTP and then also to HTTPS.  Now, another group of the Messenger servers no longer are accepting all connections (specifically HTTP and Messenger protocol).  Although Reviver 2.4.0 attempts to address this, because of these changes, at times you will sometimes be sent to servers which older versions of Messenger can no longer connect to.

Despite a good number of sign-in attempts, I have yet to experience the problem, and it seems to be a matter of (bad) luck.  It’s certainly possible this was happening before, but it’s only now become an issue.  A good percentage of those who have had the problem have been able to get back in by simply trying again later.

Unfortunately, there’s no particular elegant fix for this without some software development, but if you’re consistently seeing this problem and wouldn’t mind doing a bit of beta testing on some possible fixes, leave a comment below indicating so and I’ll follow-up with you.

Additionally, Windows Live Messenger 2012 should not have the problem, so if you are using Windows 7 or above, you can upgrade to 2012.  To do so, download and run Reviver, choose the Advanced button, then Do a new Messenger install, and then choose Windows Live Messenger 2012.