well, seems the weirdness gremlins have struck
i uninstalled, and then reinstalled msn - (the exact same copy, it came off my memory stick)
didnt fix the issue...
for some strange reason, i opened IE, i use firefox and very rarely use IE
and it was set to "work offline" - i unclicked that
and low and behold i can sign back in to msn
weirdness indeed.....