Signing in and frequent disconnects

Two questions.

IF messenger signs in at all, it disconnects and for whatever reason
prevents MSN explorer from working. It also prevents IE from working, and
while I've tried the scant few "fixes" found at MS support nothing really
works unless I reboot.
After rebooting messenger may stay signed in for an hour, or 5 minutes, but
it consistently drops connection. The error code is 80072ee7. It is allowed
full access through the Mcafee firewall, is set as the default messenger
program, and windows messenger has been disabled. I'm running Win XP service
pack 3 and using the latest "standard" version of messenger-NOT the windows
live version.

Which leads to my first question. Is Windows Live messenger the only version
we can expect to work properly from now on? I do not use messenger at all and
really do NOT like or want to use Live messenger.

Second, is it possible to use MSN explorer without ANY version of messenger?
I'd happily uninstall the whole mess in order to be able to experience a
reliable connection again.

Thanks for any help