Yes, all things considered, I think he means Windows Live Essentials. This issue has been happening to me as well, and it seemed account related rather than preference related, which is weird.
I would use one account in Messenger or Mail and this issue would occur, then I would log in with another account and everything would work just fine.
This, however, stopped when I updated to v2011, though, but still I am curious about what could cause this.