I am not sure any of you who uses Live Messenger (or more likely known as MSN Messenger) in Windows 7 have this problem but I am having it. I don’t know whether is the setting screw it up or is it just a bug.

I have my Live Messenger on as usual, everything is up, the contact windows and conversation windows are all hide nicely in the icon on Windows 7 start bar. Because of the integration of Live Messenger with Windows 7, there’s no more notification icon on your start bar at the clock area like in Vista or XP. So the problem is when I close all the Live Messenger windows, include the contact list, I can’t bring it back on. Assuming it’s fully closed, and logged out and everything, but it’s not. My friend still saw me online on their contact list but with “busy” status while on my side, I did not see any IM activity notification. I clicked on the Live Messenger icon, but it just nothing turned up and I had to end the process and restart the program.

Since Windows 7 is capable of running program in different OS mode, so I’ve decided to run my Live Messenger in XP mode and everything is doing fine now. Even if I closed all the windows, I still can access my contact list via the icon near the clock area. Great. Wonder anyone encounter this problem too?