Don't click on any "update" links. Back up your contacts, if you have not been signing in, to a vcf file. Then follow the advice here about how to do the update: http://www.sevenforums.com/browsers-mail/236569-mandatory-wle-upgrade.html .
Perhaps. Here is a rather technical post by MVP winston explaining where the hidden contacts database is in Windows Explorer: Windows Live Mail – Contacts Database « The Field Guide . Once you locate your database, copy it to a safe place (under Documents for example). After the upgrade, you could try to drag and drop it into the proper position in Windows Explorer for your latest version of WLM after the upgrade is successful and you have verified that your "not-signed-in" list is really missing. I can't be sure this will work since you are dragging and dropping between different versions of WLM. A few years ago, when there was only one version I found I could save the 2009 database and drag and drop it into a fresh (blank) install of the same version of WLM.
