Wierd Problem with yahoo..?

hi,
I have yahoo messenger installed on my machine( the stable version not beta) , it was working all fine until this moment when I reconnected as my internet connection dropped (dial up ), now everything is working fine but i cant see any of nick name i provided to my contacts, i.e. I can now only see there name as email id or yahoo id not contact nick name to identify them. so i thought that maybe i have somehow deleted the address book so when I tried to add details again it says i already have it.
Now this is strange, it even happened with my sisters id when i asked her to check her login,
So what is wrong? I have absolutely no idea, ... till now ;)

my system specs:
OS: windows xp pro no SP as it is just temporary replacement on temporary internet
firewall: zonealarm latest updated
antivirus: antivir latest updated

so what you guys say?

Does Yahoo store the contacts localy or on their server ? If it's on their server, it's a problem with them, happens with AIM too, the whole buddy list won't display. You'll probably be ok in a couple hours.

As far as i can think they store it at server otherwise how can we get these nick names when we log in at cafes and other temporary places of internet access?
So you are right i will wait till tomorrow and watch the result.

Damn i didn't even think about it that way, how did AIM work in the past than, they used to store it locally, thats how hackers extended their buddy list limit over 200, you just had to change a value in the registry, then that stopped working when they started storing them on their servers.

Any idea, or AIM simply didn't work on other machines back then, or did i someone just lie to me about them ever storing the BL locally ?

Well first of all....
my problem is solved it was problem with yahoo server and it is ok now.

About AIM i really don't know, as at that time and still in these days also AIm is not that popular among general internet users, there die hard word is still yahoo for chat, mail( gmail replacing that) and google for search. and that time I was one of them( still not improved much though :-)