Messenger 2009 not retrieving contact list

Hey, I have been using Messenger 2009 for about a month now with no problems,
but since about 3 days ago, its not working at all. It says it can't retrieve
my contact list and that it's "unavailable" and when I try to sign in with
different accounts it still has the same problem. On top of that, when I try
to log into an alternative like ebuddy.com or the like, it says that my
contact list can't be retrieved as well. The error code that messenger is
giving me was originally 80072EFD and I fixed that by re-registering some
DLL's (per the advice from another post on this forum from about 2 years ago)
but now I'm getting the 80072ee2 error message.. from messenger. I've
searched for answers about that code extensively but all I get is problems
about Windows Update, which doesn't really help me any. So, how do I fix it
and get it to retrieve my contact list?
(oh, and this isn't really ME who needs, the help, mine works fine, it's my
girlfriends but I'm a programmer so naturally she asked me for help. So, I
should be able to understand most of the terms thrown at me so if you have a
hard time putting it in easier-to-understand-terms, you don't have to.)

Thanks in advance