Cannot delete contacts - delete greyed out

Hello and welcome shmendrik mate if I understand you are getting duplicates of contacts being put into the contact list?

In my WLM if I want to delete a contact all I do is > click on Contacts (bottom left) > right click on the contact and it will highlight > click delete.

Welcome to Seven Forums shmendrik. Have you perhaps linked contacts from Facebook (or other "Social" site)?

You can't delete contacts that appear in your contacts list by virtue of your linking some social networking service like Facebook to your Windows Live account. These are your Facebook friends who would have to be removed from your list in Facebook itself. You can, however, remove the link to Facebook:
In WLMail, click the right-most button on the Home tab and select View my profile.
On the left-hand side of the page that opens, under Connected to, click Manage.
Under the name of the connected service that you no longer want on your profile, click Edit.
At the foot of the page, click Remove this connection completely.

You'll no longer see contacts from this other service in WLMail once your contacts list has synchronized with Hotmail again (this might take a few hours).

Source

A Guy

Sorry late reply shmendrik mate might be worth trying these for elimination purposes.

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html < use the /f option in Option 2 ifnecessary

As last resort mate you could try a reinstall of the WLM I know that is a pain but lets see what the above does first.

Do you know if these duplicate contacts are indeed Facebook contacts?

You can try a repair of WLM as well

Start> In search box type Programs and features> Enter> Scroll down list to Windows Live Essentials> Click Uninstall/Change> Click Repair all Windows Live Programs

A Guy

OK mate, your call. We're always up for trying if you get an itch

A Guy