thanx for all the help and to answer a few of the questions you asked -
@Vimto - the regular msn smilies do appear 95% of the time the ones that I have a problem with are what I guess u call custom smilies.
@ Sunshine - I do not use Smiley Central - learned the hardway to leave that program alone. And I do mean Windows Live Messenger Plus - Beta for me and a few friends, but Basic Windows Live Messenger for others. And I do have the emoticons enabled on my tools menu.
@Nod32 - I will try that and see if it helps.
It is just frustrating that before the upgrade to plus I did not have this problem.
Thank you all for your help and if you can think of anything else I could try that would be most appreciated.
as of 6:32pm tonite.. whatever was stopping the smilies is now resolved. so thank you all.