Comment 32 for bug 452067

I just did a clean install of Natty Beta 2 -x86 on an old spare hard drive. I'm afraid I am still seeing the issue even on a clean install, when I start ubuntu, the Change Status options in the Me Menu are disabled until I launch empathy. I have fixed the issue myself by adding empathy to the "Startup Applications" dialog in System Settings.

@pablomme, I am not sure why we are seeing different things here, do you have Empathy set as a Startup Application?