Now it's my turn to get that irritating error message "There was an error when attempting to connect to the Windows Live Calendar Service . . . &c"  

From looking on other posts and forums, I conclude that this is an error that Microsoft have themselves created by upgrading their software in such a way that it stops working; that they know all about the problem, that there is no fix, and they are not going to put it right.  Am I missing something, or should I just junk their LiveMail stuff now?