Good evening!
not sure if it's of help, but i had a similar problem as i used msn on my mobile device. the contact list on there was empty. in the end it turned out that the contacts were not deleted, just all been put on the banned list for some reason, and this was only visible if turning on the full msn client on my pc. there i could "unblock" all contacts, and things were fine again. Not sure if this is the same case as Your problem, but perhaps it helps.
ke'tharn
