Messenger Live not recognising me or other contacts as being Onlin

Please help in simple layman terms.

This past week I have not been able to use Messenger Live. My contacts are
shown as not online when in fact they are online and also they get the same
message about me when I am online. However they are able to communicate
between each other so the problem seems to relate to my computer.
I understand that some security update by Microsoft has caused this problem.
Please sort out the problem or provide suggestions so that I can get back to
keeping in touch with relatives overseas. For your information my Messenger
version is 8.1.

Disappointed nobody from Microsoft has offered some suggestions or solutions
about my problem. Please respond.

"Baggies" wrote:

> Please help in simple layman terms.
>
> This past week I have not been able to use Messenger Live. My contacts are
> shown as not online when in fact they are online and also they get the same
> message about me when I am online. However they are able to communicate
> between each other so the problem seems to relate to my computer.
> I understand that some security update by Microsoft has caused this problem.
> Please sort out the problem or provide suggestions so that I can get back to
> keeping in touch with relatives overseas. For your information my Messenger
> version is 8.1.
>