I'm not entirely sure this is new with the 3.2 beta, but if not it is certainly new with one of the latest 3.1 releases.

I use a VPN connection fairly frequetly on my laptop, and while it is active all other internet connections are blocked. When this happens, Skype goes into "Connecting..." mode, as expected, and for a certain amount of time the status of my contacts will remain as it was when I brought up the VPN connection. After a while I suppose Skype gives up and changes all contacts to offline, but until recently as soon as I shut down the VPN Skype would notice, reconnect, and then update the status on my contacts. What happens now is that it reconnects, but then all of my contacts go to "offline" - even if Skype had been holding some of them in their last known status, as soon as it reconnects it drops them all to offline, and it appears that they never come back to their real current status.

I'm running 3.2.0.53, and I've seen this today on both Windows XP with SP2 and all the latest patches, and Vista Home Premium.

So you do not have internet connection ability while you have VPN enabled?

What VPN client you are using?

Tried to reproduce it with no luck.

I am using the Cisco VPN client, version 4.6.04.0043.

Yes, when a VPN connection is active it blocks all other internet access, so Skype goes to "Connecting..." and Eudora, Thunderbird and such all say "unable to connect".

It might be possible to reproduce the situation by simply disconnecting your computer from the network for a few minutes, with Skype still running.

There seems to be some sort of time factor associated with this problem as well. As I said, when I first disconnect the VPN client, thus reenabling the general internet connection, all of the Skype contacts immediately change to offline; if I then stop Skype and restart it, they are still shown as offline. But obviously it eventually figures out the correct status, because I shut down my laptop at the office, brought it home and started it back up, and Skype immediately showed the correct status for my contacts.