[Asterisk]

I'm having a problem signing in to MSN in a unique way that I haven't seen discussed.

I have 2 different MSN messenger (Passport) accounts. Both can login to passport sites, change passwords and member information without problems. One passport is registered with an @hotmail.com email address, and with it I can login to MSN as usual.

The other is an @different-host.com email address, and when I try to login, the "Signing in to .NET Messenger Service failed because the service is temporarily unavailable" dialog pops up.

When I try to login to that account with Trillian, I get the following message:

*** Creating connection "email@different-host.com"
*** Server Error: Internal server error. Please try again later.
*** Lost connection to network (Error Code: 0).

I thought it may have been an issue with my host not being hotmail.com, but I created another hotmail passport and cannot connect with it either in the same way. Add to that the fact that my wife connects to MSN with her @different-host.com passport successfully and it's pretty obvious that that's not the problem.

Next I thought it may be the computer or the network, but I have conclusively been able to prove the exact same behaviour on 4 different computers (2 WinXP, 2 Win2k) and 3 networks, one of which was a stand-alone dial-up connection. So that's not it either.

If it's not my account host, and not my computer, or network connection, what's left? Does anyone have a good idea? MSN messenger service doesn't seem to have an official support contact, unless I've missed it.