Contacts won't appear for NEW MSN?! Help!

Hello,
it told me that I wasn't allowed to continue using MSN Messenger unless I downloaded the new version. I've tried using it once before; the same problem occurred as the one I am currently having. (And what makes it worse, is this download too me 16 hours to do! -.-' )
I can sign in, but every single time I try to add a contact, even if they use MSN, it says.. "You're done! It looks like this contact doesn't use Messenger yet." and it won't show any of my contacts where the contact list is. It says I have no contacts. And I added my MSN account on my yahoo account, to see if an IM would pop up so I could add them that way, and it said I was offline, when I was online on MSN.

And, if I HAD to download the new one, I doubt I'd be able to revert back to the old one, correct?

HELP ME?