Windows Messanger 4.7

I have a new problem with messanger. Recently messanger
will not display my contact list or show a notification
Icon (down near the clock) to show that it is running.
The process msmsgs.exe is running. Msn messanger 5.0
works fine. This behavior occurs wether or not I have MSN
messanger installed. I did recently upgrade my directx to
9.0 and noted the possible problem with messanger so I
upgraded to 9.0a. I do have norton antivirus 2003 and
turned off the instant message scanning for messanger. I
would not really care about this but I do use microsoft
portrait and when I click the buddy list option it
says"this action can not be compleated becaus the other
program is busy. Choose switch to to activate the busy
progam to correct the problem". When I click switch to it
pops up the start menu! How do I fix this behavior@@?