MSN & Hotmail Problems

[andi]

Neither msn or hotmail will let me sign in again tonight (Wednesday). Things went wrong last night.

Hotmail gives the 'Cannot find server' and 'The page cannot be displayed' message, when i try to sign in, and msn messenger (I'm using 7.5) tells me it has been unable to sign me in at this time, giving the error code 80048820. I've tried troubleshooting, and it suggests my gateway is offline. I've tried clicking repair, and thats not working.

I've looked at some help forums for some fixes, non of which work.

I'm kind of getting desperate now. Any idea's anyone?

[Kirsty]

That's strange

What if you try signing in under a different email address? I don't see how that would make the slightest difference but you never know.

[andi]

I've tried to create a new hotmail account, but it's not even letting me do that.

[Kirsty]

Oh Do you want me to open a new one for you to try?

[andi]

Yeah, that would be a good idea thanks.

If you e-mail or PM the account name, and password then i can try that tomorrow night.

If that doesn't work, i guess the next step would be for me to give you my password, and see if you can log into my account, in which case that would tell us definately the problem is with my computer.

[Kirsty]

Ok I've sent you a PM. I don't really see how it could be your address, it must be a problem with MSN but it's worth a try!

[andi]

Thanks Kirsty. I'll give it a go tonight, and let you know what happens.

[Manoj]

Maybe it's your internet server?

[andi]

I don't know Manoj. Everything seems to work apart from msn and hotmail, so it must be something to do with my computer, but i don't really know what i'm looking for.

Basically the story so far goes as follows :

I turned on Tuesday night, and got an error message saying that Norton Anti-Virus couldn’t start, telling me to restart my computer, which made no difference if I did. When I bought the machine, it came with a 3 months subscription to Norton Internet Security, so once I started using the machine for the internet, I obviously registered and used this. When this expired in May, I downloaded a free Anti Virus programme from the net, but I never turned Norton off, just left it running in the background, and it’s always worked fine until Tuesday.

On Tuesday night I couldn’t get msn, hotmail, or yahoo mail to work, and when I logged into HOW, it showed i was logged in, but it doesn’t let me do anything. Anyway, I cleared the cache in the Internet settings, and that seemed to fix everything except hotmail, and msn.

I've already mentioned what happens when i try to sign into either of these. I downloaded yahoo messenger last night, and that wouldn't connect either, which suggets maybe there is something wrong with my connection, but i'm not sure what to check, or how to correct the problem, if there is something wrong with my connection settings.

[Kirsty]

Maybe your anti virus is restricting your access. If you're not using Norton anymore then you could try uninstalling it.

[andi]

Thats on my list of things to try tonight Kirsty. I think i'm going to try deleting Norton, and see if that cures the problem.

[Kirsty]

Yeahhh. You should delete it anyway if you don't use it anymore.

[andi]

Yeah, well i can't use it anymore anyway, since the subsription expired in May, and it's now decided not to work at all, so deleting it is the only thing i can sensibly do with it, as i use another virus checker now anyway.

[Kirsty]

Yeah, that's what I mean, if you're not using it you should delete it because two different systems would just clash otherwise. No point keeping it anyway if the subscription is over and you don't use it!

[andi]

Yes, exactly. Well i know it's definately my computer now, so there has to be something wrong with my connection settings. Now i just need to find out what, where and how to fix it.