Messenger f up

Greetings.

So, for some reason today all my contacts in MSN Messenger were gone.

I figured this was some wacky MS way of forcing me to upgrade, so I off and went and installed the most current (bloated) version of Live Messenger 2008.
Nada. All contacts still awol. I've followed all FAQ concerning this issue, to no avail. I've also UN, and re installed both my earlier, and this version of MSN. Nada. Yes, I cleared the registry. No, I don't have a virus, trojan, or spyware happening. This is purely a bizzare software issue. This does seem to be a common problem, and I'm hoping someone can help me out here.

TIA

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I'm not sure how MSN messenger works, but I know AOL instant messenger stores your contact list on the server, and sends it down when you log in. Under a circumstance like that, if you lose your local cache of contacts, I would imagine there is nothing you can do. I think it might be a problem with their server.

I'll look into it though. If you say it's a common problem, then there is probably a solution out there somewhere.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

is there a "windows messenger" installed?
fire it up

looking for local copies of contacts/conversations depends on your privacy settings, i think. i guess you would be saving contacts locally from now on

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

what about address book? peeked in there? outlook?
there might have been shared stuff/ imports

the uninstall however would make a search pointless
patience perhaps? ms might be having database probs. they would restore from back up and tomorrow would be hunky dory

wow
rusty with the ms stuff

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Windows Messenger (which is not MSN Messenger; its more like the "business version") can be accessed by Clicking Start, then Run, typing MSMSGS and pressing return

As others have noted, your contact list is stored on MSN servers, not your local PC. If it's empty, then sorry.. they lost your contacts

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

You can try logging in from a web messenger service like eBuddy or MSN's own.
Also, try logging in from another machine and waiting, because hopefully you will still be in other people's contact lists, and you'll start to see "XYZ has added you to their contact list" as *they* come online.. Eventually all of your contacts will come online at some point and you'll get an add request for them. It can be quite refreshing actually.. cleans up your list

 

The best way to identify if your contacts list has truly been lost is to perhaps log into http://home.services.spaces.live.com/ it doesn't matter if you have a space or not, but login any how. Click the link to add people and make sure you choose "By Messenger".

If you still have a list of people to add, then obviously somethings up with the software on your computer, however if the list doesn't exist then something has gone awry at Microsofts end.

It's the simplest test I think you can try to help debug. Since you'll then know whether to bitch and moan at MS or get a trojan scanner on the go.

 

Get Adium.

 

Thanks to all.

I was aware of course, that my contacts are actually maintained on an MS server. Everything I've researched, including directly from MS indicates that all I really have to do is delete my local Contacts cache, and on next login, everything will be back. This of course, didn't work. No matter how deep I go into Windows, there seems to be no record of my contacts.

Perhaps I will look upon this as a good thing. As contacts do come online, if they message me, I'll add form there.
Still, it's frustrating. And odd.


Thanks again all.