Live Mail deleting contacts!

I have just moved from a laptop running Windows XP and Outlook Express to my new laptop running Windows 7 64 bit and Windows Live Mail. Live Mail is a bit different from Outlook Express but I'm getting used to it. The problem I have is that people keep disappearing from my contact list. I go to send an email to someone and discover that they have been removed from my contact list. Has anyone else had this problem? I also can't log in to the help section as it tells me that the ID or the password I've entered are wrong. They are not wrong as I wrote them down when I set up the live ID. Any ideas on that would be interesting as well. Cheers.

It sounds like you had a corrupted installation of your Windows Live Mail (WLM) app. Why don't you try uninstalling it and then reinstalling it, to hopefully get a clean WLM download. If you decide to do this, before you reinstall WLM, be sure to do an Advanced Search of your entire system (NOT just the Index) to be sure you've gotten rid of all of the WLM remnants that might still be on your system after the original uninstall. When doing so, be sure to check the box in Advanced Search that says: "Included non-indexed, hidden and system files." Once the Advanced Search is done (and you've deleted any old WLM remnants, if any) then you can do your 2nd installation of WLM. Good luck.

Thanks for the information however I didn't actually install Live Mail. I had the laptop custom built by Sony and it was installed on the system when I got the machine. The only part I was involved in was signing up for a Live ID. My other problem is that I no longer have a back-up of my contacts as I formatted and re-partitioned the drive on my other laptop. Any idea how I go about backing up my contacts before I un-install the thing?

You know I'm growing to hate anything that is connected to Microsoft as their products are never anything but trouble. I think I might just get rid of the damn thing altogether and replace it with Thunderbird!

If, when you created the contact list originally, you were logged in to WLM with a live ID, you must login in again with the same live ID to see the same contact list. I call it your "signed-in" contact list. Whenever you are not signed in to WLM, you will see instead your "not-signed-in" contact list. The advantage of signing in is that your contacts are saved on the website contacts.live.com which is an alternate location from which to view them.