Freinds List not working for weeks

Hey everyone, my freinds list hasnt worked in weeks,,,all it says is waiting or hippos..i know alot of folks with the same problem...it sucks and im pretty tired of it..anyone have any tricks to get it working? clearing cache, relogging,,nothing works...kinda like almost everything in second life. i use windlight and the regular veiwer,,doesnt work in either...didnt work in the old version of windlight either...any ideas would be apprieated,,,thanks

When this happens to me, if I double click on "waiting" or "hippos"... it pops open an IM window and will have one of your friends names listed in that window. Then send them a message and close the window. Your friends list should appear in a moment or two.

I've tried the sending an IM to force my friends list to load. It works about half the time. The problem started for me about a month ago (maybe even longer, I don't remember exactly). I've spent hours in SL and the friends list never loaded even if I was in IM"s with several of my friends during that session........though that is not the norm at all. What I've found that seems to work consistantly is for one of your friends to log on or off and you have the notify when friends are online enabled. A little hard to ask one of your friends to log just to "fix" your friends list though. I usually just wait for someone to log on or off. You can always search or use the calling card to find your friends until that happens. The problem seems more prevalant on the regular viewer for me.........though Windlight has the same issue to a smaller extent.