Cant access friends list & player status

hey a few wks back i had a problem where I couldnt connect to guildwars at all, I deleted the gw.dat file and that problem seems to have disappeared, what im experiencing now is I can play the game for numerous hours at a time, changing districts, areas etc without getting disconnected, only thing is my friends list is unaccessable i try connecting to it but it often never works.

Any ideas would be kindly appreciated.