Tips : Error 8100030d on MSN

This post is a re-post of a tutorial on how to deal with the annoying error 8100030d when signing in.

Symptons:
Signing in to Windows Live Messenger failed because the service is temporary unavailable. Error Code 8100030d,

Causes:
The system clock or date may be set incorrectly.
The Dynamic Link Library (DLL) softpub.dll, may not be registered on the system.
Internet Explorer may be using an invalid proxy server.
Zone Alarm is running.

Solution:
- Double click on the clock in the taskbar and make sure the system clock is set correctly.
- Disable Zone Alarm
- Register softpub.dll using the regsvr32.exe tool.Click Start, and then click Run.
- In the Open box, type regsvr32 softpub.dll and then click OK.
- Do the same for the following regsvr32 wintrust.dll, regsvr32 initpki.dll, regsvr32 MSXML3.dll.
- Restart Windows Live Messenger.

as mentioned here

However the the steps didnt work for me just now. A further read on the 199 comments lead me to one solution by a guy named Matt Caplin

matt caplin said... hi all, after a couple of days without msn working and constant googling, i've found the solution. i'll save the talk for after, here it is: go to regedit > HKEY_CURRENT_USER > software > microsoft > windows live contacts > database one of my accounts wasn't working but the other was, so i deleted the two files that were from the account that wasn't working (one should say shadow at the end of the file name) after deleting those, try signing in. it should work! i read somewhere, maybe on here, that you have to delete the contact info in the microsoft files accessed via my computer. tried that and it didn't work. then i read somewhere else about deleting the policies folder in regedit and i couldn't find that, because the version they were talking about was from like, 2005. sooo add two and two and i came up with the above.

 

I followed his instructions, and voila! I can sign in again! Kudos, man!

Disclaimer: I do not take credit for this, I’m simply re-posting the solution. Hope it does some help to my readers out there  *wink*