No contacts when Sign In

Apparently you have more than one issue with your WLM since you mentioned in another post that it doesn’t even remember your personal message each time you sign in.

the following reasons may apply when your contacts do not appear when you are using Windows Live Messenger:
– You may have deleted this contact by using another program that uses the same address book.
– Your contacts may not have signed in to their Messenger, MSN Hotmail, or MSN accounts in more than 60 days.
– A cache file in Windows Live Messenger may be corrupted.

If you have a Hotmail or an MSN Messenger address, the contact list that appears in Messenger is also shared by Hotmail. Therefore, if you delete a contact from the Hotmail address book, that contact will also be deleted from the Messenger contact list. Alternatively, if you are using the MSN client program or Outlook Express to access your Hotmail Inbox, deleting contacts in Outlook Express can delete the contacts from Messenger.

Each user who signs in to MSN Messenger has a contact list. If the user is signed in with a Microsoft domain e-mail address, that user’s contact list is shared between Hotmail and Messenger.

The MSN policy is to delete an inactive user’s address from other users’ contact lists after 60 days of inactivity. This does not apply to inactive MSN paying subscribers or to inactive Hotmail Extra Storage subscribers.

If a contact has disappeared from your contact list, that person may not have signed in to Messenger or used that Hotmail account or that MSN account for more than 60 days. However, the associated Microsoft Passport Network credentials (the e-mail address and password that you use to sign in to the Passport Network) may still be valid. To communicate with that contact again, you must again add that contact to your contact list.

1. Re-add contacts from your allow list to Contact list:
a. Sign in to Messenger.
b. On the “Tools” menu, click “Options,” and then click “Privacy.”
c. Right-click each contact on the Allow List, and then click “Add to Contact list.”

If the contact is not on your Allow List, add the contact:
i. In the main MSN Messenger window, click “Add a Contact” on the “Contacts” menu.
ii. Follow the steps in the wizard to add the contact.

2. If your contact list is empty or incomplete after you upgrade to Windows Live Messenger, the cached contact list may not have updated correctly. To update your contact list, follow these steps:
a. Sign out of Messenger.
b. Click “Start,” click “Run,” type the following command, and then click “OK”:
%USERPROFILE%Local SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftMessenger
c. A new Microsoft Windows Explorer window opens. In the window, click your Messenger ID.
d. Double-click the Contacts folder.
e. Delete the two folders that are in the Contacts folder.
f. Sign in to Messenger again.

I appreciate your response, PrinceG. I have had WLM open for about a week adding people that would never show up as online, and this was why. I thought it was a service problem until I signed in using Gaim earlier and was hit with about a dozen authorization requests that apparently had been backed up. Now I’m worried about using WLM for business because I fear people will be looking for me and not finding me!

Thanks again for your expertise in solving the problem. It worked beautifully. For now. 🙂