[MartinBradley]

Welcome to BigBlueBall.

SMC.exe is Sygate Personal Firewall.

Disable the firewall whilst you try to sign into MSN Messenger, and see if the problem still occurs. Get back to us with the result.

Thanks.

EDIT - Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't that version of MSN Messenger require Windows XP? That could be a cause...