And so it is.
And this in relation with the question 'how to get back my contacts': they may have been stored somewhere 'in the cloud' by your email provider, as is done for the users of a Microsoft email account like Hotmail, LiveMail or Outlook - and here starts the confusion: Microsoft LiveMail email account <> Windows LiveMail client; Microsoft Outlook email account <> Windows Outlook email client.
So I thought open the webmail pages of your email provider, log in and look for the contact there.
Henk