Every time I put my laptop (with Windows Vista Business) on hibernation, sleep or just lose internet connection, my MSN live messenger will not connect. Sometimes I will fix this by just killing the process and restarting the program. Still, is just big a pain to the point that I will go days without using it.

Like most of you visiting me from google or yahoo, I started by searching Error 80040200. While reading many results I found the following instructions from this blog post:

1) Close Messenger. Go into Task Manager and ensure that the “msnmsgr.exe” process is not there. If it is, kill the process.

2.) Navigate to C:\Users\<YourUserName>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts and delete the entire contents of the folder.

For XP go to: C:\Documents and Settings\Users\Local Settings\AppData\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts (thanks to Mary for bringing this up)

3.) Restart Windows Live Messenger.

If that works… great!!!, no more error 80040200 for you. However, if you are stuck in step two trying to delete all files without success, then continue reading.

The reason we got stuck is because another process was using the files you can’t delete, one of them being contacts.edb. Just try to find the process wlcomm.exe in the Task Manager. This might be the process stoping you from deleting the file. So, if you can’t find it, proceed to download the Process Explorer. Once you go it, run it and press Ctrl+F or go to “Find” in the main menu and click on “Find Handle or DLL” button. Then you will have a pop up where you write the name of the file contacts.edb (which is the one you can’t delete), as shown in the image bellow. (If you think this is a bit advance for you or need any help, please write a comment and I will gladly help you)

Once you find the process kill it, delete all the files and restart the MSN live Messenger. Again, if you got any questions drop them in the comments and I will be back to you.