When Live Mesh fails

TL;DR: If Live Mesh stops working, check the system clock on each machine is correct.

I’ve been using Windows Live Mesh for quite some time, replicating a library of digital photos across three different machines(*). This gives my wife and I considerable flexibility, in that it doesn’t matter where photos are downloaded, we both have ready access.

(*) No, this isn’t our backup strategy, it’s a sharing strategy. We do backups using Crashplan.

Recently, though, I noticed that one system was no longer being updated. Live Mesh reported that it was connected, I could use the Mesh remoting feature to connect to the machine, but updates just didn’t happen.

Following guidance I found through Google, I logged out of Live Mesh on that machine, then back in, only to have it reject my Windows Live ID and password, even though they worked fine on other machines.

Based on the age old IT mantra of “reboot or reinstall”, I removed Live Mesh, reinstalled, only to get this error when I tried to sign on:

There might be a problem with your Internet connection.

Make sure your computer is connected to the Internet, and then try again.

The internet connection was working fine. Strange.

When I tried to log onto live.com through a web browser, Internet Explorer balked, claiming the website security certificate was invalid! Even stranger.

Then I noticed the problem - the date/time on the machine was wrong. Two months wrong.

Fixing the clock fixed the problem accepting my Live ID, and now Live Mesh is busy catching up on sychronising files.

Problem Solved.