My contacts have turned into non-instant messenging contacts

I IM a lot, and I have over thirty contacts IM with. To some, thats not a
lot, but it's a lot of people to me. But, something has gone horridly wrong
with my Windows Live Messenger service - Only a third are now 'IM contact'.
The rest have become non-instand messenging contacts. If it helps, I only
have ten left. Another oddity is that I was logged in at the time, and it
read my online contacts. Then, I check back so I can IM with a friend, only
to see only one online.

Could this be the work of a virus?

See, the remaining ten contacts aren't even solidly hotmail - they are all
manner of different emails, but some are, in fact, Hotnmail adresses, so it
isn't contained to one area.

So... Could this be some funky end to some hidden trial mode?

Exactly the same issue happened to me. I've got over 200 contacts (some are
my friends and relatives overseas) and now I've only got 8 people left on my
usual contact lists. Others are still in my non-instant messaging contact
lists. I've managed to recover up to 25 contacts (by adding the contacts back
when they messaged me) but after a short while they moved back to the
non-instant messagingin contacts. I've got a friend with similar issue as
well. Can anyone help us with this?

"Soul Selim" wrote:

> I IM a lot, and I have over thirty contacts IM with. To some, thats not a
> lot, but it's a lot of people to me. But, something has gone horridly wrong
> with my Windows Live Messenger service - Only a third are now 'IM contact'.
> The rest have become non-instand messenging contacts. If it helps, I only
> have ten left. Another oddity is that I was logged in at the time, and it
> read my online contacts. Then, I check back so I can IM with a friend, only
> to see only one online.
>
> Could this be the work of a virus?
>
> See, the remaining ten contacts aren't even solidly hotmail - they are all
> manner of different emails, but some are, in fact, Hotnmail adresses, so it
> isn't contained to one area.
>
> So... Could this be some funky end to some hidden trial mode?