Monday 16 May 2011

Windows Live Messenger – Online Contacts Not Showing

After signing into WLM this morning none of the contacts that were online were showing up. In fact the whole Online category was gone.

image

After signing into WLM on another system the Online contacts were indeed showing. So, the problem seemed to be localized to this machine.

A thread on the TechArena forum helped to figure out how to fix things:

What we had to do to fix the situation:

  1. Exit from WLM
    1. ALT –> File –> Exit
  2. Open Windows Explorer
  3. Navigate to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live
  4. Delete the Contacts folder
    • image
  5. If the above error shows up, do not close it.
    1. Open Task Manager
    2. Click the Processes tab
    3. End Task on wlcomm.exe *32
      • image
    4. Close the Task Manager
  6. Flip back to the error message and click the Try Again button
  7. Open WLM
    • Note that it may take a minute or two before it starts
    • image
  8. WLM should start up and show all online contacts!
    • image

We were now ready to make contact with the folks we need to!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tried so many solution and this one actually worked!! Thanks!!

Carina said...

Thanks, it worked like a charm

Rachel said...

This solution worked here too, thanks!

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU SO MUCH. I spent ages trying to solve this problem up and only this solution worked

Anonymous said...

Thank u so much :)

Anonymous said...

Thank you!This has been driving us crazy for days ... now working!

dsteve54 said...

Good going! That was just what was needed!

Anonymous said...

Great it works!!

Wasif Khan said...

Thanks, It really works.

Anonymous said...

worked great! microsoft please fix this...

Anonymous said...

Sadly it didn't work for me. Still searching for a solution...

Anonymous said...

AWESOME!! Worked perfectly!