Ok, yes, I am a techie, I do work on computers all day, and no I do not know everything. That is why I am asking here.

I had the latest release of MSN messenger and really like it as a messenging program.

Ok, so I was taking it for granted and patched my MSN with some polygomi crap.

I can uninstall, reinstall, whatever. Doesn't matter, my MSN freezes when signing in.

I am running Windows XP Pro SP2, and all those goodies..

I have messenger 4.0 and it works fine, so I know it is not a routing/firewall issue....

Any ideas?!

hmmm... can't say. Are you offically in the beta?
I have not used this build yet. But did you install over it\?
Maybe some sort of registry entry got stuck where it don't belong...

Well it is the latest 'official' release.