How to fix live msn messenger 8.0 when it hangs while “signing in”

I have several accounts in my msn messenger. Yesterday one of my accounts just wouldn’t sign-in.
My live messenger kept trying to sign-in forever, setting a false password returned an error message and I had no problem sign-in with my other msn account.
After spending two hours on this problem and in the spirit of 16bytes, I decided to post the solution to this problem.

I found two solutions on the web, one did not work, but maybe it will be helpful for others.
The solution that did not work for me:
“To correct this, click Start, then Run, then type:
%appdata%\microsoft
and click OK.
Right-click the MSN Messenger folder and choose Delete. After all this, restart Messenger
and see if the problem has been corrected.”

Here it is source of this solution

It toke me quite a while to find the other solution, it looked risky because it involved regedit, but it did the trick.
The solution that worked:
“1. Hit "run" in the start menu
2. Type "regedit"
3. Open "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSNMessenger"
4. Delete the folder called MSN Messenger
5. After this MSN Messenger Live will login as normal.”

Here it is source of this solution

The second solution involves playing with the computer registry so be careful and “do not try this at home” if you do not know what your doing.