Ichat Away Message help

I dont know if this was already posted i didnt see anything. Anyway me and my friends have been having problems with ichat lately, i belive its from the latest update 10.5.8. But when you are available and try to go away your away message will be your status however you will still be 'green' as in being available. The only way iv found to go 'red' and be away is sign off ichat and sign back on as away. Then you have to sign off and back on to become available again.

This is a known issue and the work round is to not use the the status choices in the Buddy List but to set up to have the icon in the menubar and use that - when once app is running use that menu to log out and then use that menu to log in and then status changes from menubar selection work correctly after that

I dont quite understand what your saying.
think you can give a step by step thing?
For example:
>ichat
>preferances
>ect.

iChat/Preferences/General check the box - Show status in menu bar.
Go to drop down ichat window in menu bar and select Off Line.
Go back there and select one of the status choices and iChat will re log into AIM server and show your mates the correct status message.
Continue to use menu bar selections and not those in the Buddy List under your name.