PPCGeeks - favorite contacts not showing up after pim back up?

For as long as been flashing phones, my method for backing up contacts has always been copying the pim file, and switching the stock pim, with my backed up pim, and rebooting. however this time, some of my favorite contacts will not show up. Ive even tried manually putting them in, they still does not show up, even after manually re-entering them in. I see the names in my call history, but they will not show up in my contact list. the pim file i have, is 880kb, but when i replace, and soft reset, it imeediately drops to 772k and the favorites are gone. Part of it has me thinking its the former rom I was on. I copied the pimp, right before flashing. I cant help but think it was somethin wrong with that rom. Anybody have any suggestions how to get my favorites to show up? Ive tried copying the pim, and then doing a pim back up, but the application will only read the loaded pim. Im stumped.