Having an intermittent problem with Lync 2013 running in Windows 8.1. When I first sign-in to Lync (I'm working on an laptop that is part of my organizations domain and I'm logged in before I start Lync) all my contacts show up and for about 1 second or less, I can see that their presence is displayed correctly (Available, Busy, Away, In a meeting, On a call, etc.). Then all of the sudden all contacts switch to "Presence Unknown". My own presence is showing as "Available".
If I try to message a contact, it just shows the spinning dots and then eventually fails. One time the message went through, the recipient said they got the message twice, and for a brief moment - maybe bout a minute - the presence status for all the contacts was once again available and showing. But then once again changed back to "Presence Unknown". Most of the time if it shows "Presence Unknown" I'm unable to IM the contact.
Sometimes - if I wait long enough - the presence status eventually appears and I'm able to communicate with contacts. But that can take up to an hour or more.
Sometimes after waiting for a bit, I get signed-off automatically. This morning that happened and I got a pop-up message "Server unreachable." If I click on sign-in again, it was able to sign-in and my status was once again"Available" but all contacts were showing as "Presence Unknown"
Sometimes if I sign-out/in, that fixes things but that works less frequently. Usually the same situation just repeats where initially everything looks correct - everyone's presence is accurate - then immediately changes to "Presence Unknown" and nobody is reachable.
Rebooting doesn't seem to work all the time but sometimes.
If I connect with Lync2010, none of these issues happen.
Is this a problem with Lync2013? A problem with Windows 8.1? A system setup issue within my organization?