Error while loading Pidgin on UBuntu

When I ran Pidgin on UBuntu the other day I got the following error:

Error Reading blist.xml

An error was encountered reading your buddy list. They have not been loaded, and the old file has been renamed to /home/sai/.purple/blist.xml~.

I used the following procedure to debug this process:

Using the following command:

pidgin -d log > ~/Desktop/log.log

I redirected the log messages to a log.log file and then searched that file for 'error' and was able to locate the following:

(23:01:26) util: Reading file blist.xml from directory /home/sai/.purple
(23:01:26) xmlnode: Error parsing xml file: xmlParseCharRef: invalid xmlChar value 5
(23:01:26) util: Error parsing file /home/sai/.purple/blist.xml. Renaming old file to blist.xml~

When I looked at blist.xml file xmlChar 5 it turned out that there were two groups with same names from two different messengers. I then deleted that group, Quit Pidgin and then deleted blist.xml & blist.xml~ from /home/sai/.purple/ folder. After this when I started Pidgin that error was gone.

Please do share if this helps you to resolve your issues.