This problem is present for me in Live Messenger 8.1 too. I'm using Vista Ultimate.

This is what happens: I will sign on, everything is fine. I can talk to people, then, about ten minutes in, everything stops working.

I can't change my status. I can't receive IMs (my contacts say they get the "message cannot be delivered to all recipients" error). When I send IMs, I do not get the "message cannot be delivered to all recipients" error, but my contacts don't get the message I sent them either.

I appear online to my contacts when this is occuring. It seems like the link between the server & client has been severed, but neither knows about it.

If I signout, I get a error window saying "Could not start a conversation with X (X is a contact name)". It comes up 3 times for every contact I tried to talk to.

When I sign back in, it is OK for another ten minutes or so.

Is this a known glitch, or something new? Any ideas as to solutions or causes?

Kind regards,
Tom.