I’m having the same problem listed above … this happened a few days ago …. A buddy appears as offline to me — and I appear offline to them — neither one of us has blocked each other and we are on each others buddy list. I don’t think this is a firewall thing since I can see other people I work with who are on the same system and they can see me — this is really bugging me — I am not a “computer” person and I really don’t understand much about them — I found this site and everyone seems to be very knowledgable about the IM world. I uninstalled AIM and then reinstalled and still nothing. Please help!