Cant access my contacts anymore after upgrade to 2.2

Hi you guys,

I have just updated my samsung galaxy from 2.1 to 2.2 froyo. (via kies).
It all went well up until the phone restarted with a message:
"The process android.process.acore has stopped unexepectedly. Please try again."  From there on, that message appears every single time, I either select the phone or the contacts. When selecting phone, I eventually manage to get to the phone screen.ie: the phone logs for example. (after the force close, but the message keeps coming every time I scroll through the phone logs for example)
But the worst is the contacts...I cant access my contacts at all anymore..and I did not back them up before...
I tried backing up the contacts with kies, but it fails systematically.
Basically now I have 2 problems:
1- backup my contacts

Is there a way to backup the contacts from my PC?? (I.e by browing the phone device..) and manually copying some files...I looked but did not spot anything that looks like contacts.

2- get my phone back to a working state...(phone & contacts)

How about a factory reset? would that fix the problem and take me back to 2.1? But of course I would lose all my contacts, which are only stored on the phone and on the SD card. :-(

Please help, Thank you.

The easiest way to manage your contacts is to make sure you have them in Google Mail. But if they aren't in Google mail you should be able to export your contacts using these directions

It's always a good idea to do a factory reset after an update - even of a clean system. No one want to but it really prevent anguish down the road.