My friends computer with Windows 7 cannot open any email in Hotmail. It tells her that she must buy something before she can open anything. I haven’t looked at her computer yet but will try at the first opportunity. Not sure what that something is that she is asked to buy. Perhaps someone here knows about a virus or something that prevents her from opening emails. Can’t give you any more information at this time.
Are you sure it’s the Hotmail web page?
Hotmail is now rebranded as Outlook, like the email program. You have to buy the actual Outlook email program now. But using the Hotmail/Outlook website is free.
So, step 1: Outlook web site or Outlook program?
Step 2: Malware scan.
Not exactly.
Hotmail is now branded as “Windows Live Mail,” which is also the Windows email client that used to be called Outlook Express. I used Outlook Express and now use Windows Live Mail. Never used Outlook.
I have Windows 7 as well as a Hotmail address, and I can access my Hotmail webmail just add I could in Windows XP.
Suggest you look personally at whatever error message your friend is getting.
Old days:
hotmail was a website
Outlook express, Outlook were email programmes.
Not long ago:
live.com was a website for microsoft “live” websites,
hotmail got onto there
but also, there were programmes to install,
eg microsoft live mail , among other “live” programmes to download, using the own downloader/installer
NOW:
website Hotmail.com is rebranded OUTLOOK.COM . BUT There is no need to buy OUTLOOK. They mean that the webpage is just like using outlook
Live.com’s email is probably rebranded to outlook.com
Programs like Outlook , Microsoft Live mail, should continue to work with “outlook.com” incantation of hotmail , but really old program versions could be out of date and not have the connector to install. So it may reccommend update of the Outlook…
But you can switch to using Windows live mail, which is available free , or just use the website outlook.com
She doesn’t use Outlook as her email address it is simply nnnn@hotmail.com . I will have to ask her what is the exact message that she gets when trying to open her email. Better yet, I need to see her computer here before making any opinions.
Yes, your email address stays as “(whatever)@hotmail.com” - it doesn’t change. But the hotmail.com URL is supposed to quietly redirect to outlook.com.
All I can say is that’s what’s been happening for me. I get redirected to outlook and then sign in the same way I ever did.
What you describe is a symptom of a browser hijack or a virus. A system scan would be advised before proceeding further – the longer you wait, the worse it will get and the harder it will be to fix.
Alternatively, you could try restoring the system to a date before the problem cropped up, which may or may not fix it. And again, time is of the essence.
Yes, I think that I need to see her computer and set it back to a time when the problem didn’t happen. That seems to be a best solution for now. She doesn’t know anything about computers except to do email.
For me, the Hotmail address ends with mail.live.com. Not outlook.com. Up in the top left corner it does say “Outlook”. So (for me) it’s a branding rather than the actual web address.
Well, she brought her computer to me this afternoon and the problem was not in opening email. It was in opening an attachment with .pps. It tells her that she must buy Office 2010 and she already has Office 2010 which works fine for Word, Excel and Power Point. I couldn’t help her because I couldn’t find the cause for her problem.
PPS is a Power Point file. Suggest you save it to the desktop or somewhere. Then open Power Point and navigate to the file and try to open from within PP. Or ask her to forward to you, you open it and convert to a pdf and send it back to her. People shouldn’t go around emailing PP files anyway.
It’s moot now, but both my hotmail and msn (remember that? 
) accounts are usable in the outlook website. But it seems to me I had to ‘upgrade’ to Outlook somehow. Personally I think the new Outlook is a buggy piece of crap. It often asks me if I want to leave the page, it crops up with “Outlook is having a problem” (paraphrased) quite often and it reloads quite often.
I had so many problems with Outlook that I just scrapped it and now use only Gmail. Everything works fine with it. I installed it in her computer and am waiting for her to let me know how it works for her.
Sounds like she was using Office 2010 Starter Edition. A recent update from Microsoft clobbered it.
You need to re-associate all the file types with the proper programs.
May also affect systems that came with Office 2010 pre-installed by the computer manufacturer and a separate version of office then put on.
She is not using the starter version. She has the Home and School version.
She can install & use a free Microsoft Power Point reader app. You can’t create or edit the files but it allows you to view them. Download it here (official Microsoft site & app…)
Well, she came to me again, so what I did was to re-install Office with a repair and now everything works fine again. Still don’t know what was the problem, but now all is well. So, thanks to all for your friendly advice.