Apparently, something went wrong with some Windows/Windows Live component the other day. I assume it happened when my display adapter last crashed because Windows Live Messenger also crashed. Unfortunately, nothing appeared too wrong on my end. MSN would open and I’d click to sign in and it would simply tell me it was unavailable. Super helpful, right?
The specific error message was 80040154 and a quick search brought up all sorts of pages that told me to register a specific DLL. However, the instructions didn’t work. Luckily, I’m a smart cookie so I went straight to fixing Windows Live Essentials from the Control Panel. This isn’t rocket science but, considering that almost 100,000 people found the recommended solution not helpful, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to write up a quick post about it.