I'm not sure a reinstall is going to help.  I've seen this issue myself, but it didn't start until a few days into our first tests.  The first couple users I set up worked perfectly.  But later users saw this, and it's happened for every user since, with every new install.  The fix is simple: toggle your online/offline status once in the "Live Help" window, ie. click the Lightning Bolt icon.  (From this, I'm guessing it's coming from an initial setting in the database.)  Unfortunately, the Lightning Bolt icon and the Music icon are also broken in 2.1.7.  I manged a fix here, but it's a true hack, very crude and using hard-coded paths to the two images.  I am not in a position to spend any more time with HCL, as we'll be using a more reliable chat system instead.  But if you like, I can give you a few pointers after hours.

Todd