over the past couple of weeks i was hit with a trojan that inspired me to buy an exterior harddrive to back up important files. this required me to upgrade my operating system from word 98 to word 98 second edition. however, since i did that, i have not been able to access hotmail, let alone login to my hotmail account. i am concerned that as time goes by that i will lose my spunkyuncle@hotmail.com account. what can i do to rectify this? is there something else going on at hotmail? are they in fact open for business?

Install Mozilla or Firefox browser. See if you can access the Hotmail account when using one of those. If so you'll have isolated the problem as one which relates to Internet Explorer.

dear catweazle;

thanks for responding to my quiery.

actually, a friend suggested that i go into my control panel to internet options, click on privacy & reduce my spam filter to medium; and, by god, it worked.

so, go figure!

your user name is very similar to my band website, http://www.beerweazl.com.

it's from a band joke that our biggest fans are "beer weazls", that is folks that somehow always seem to find money to buy a bottle of beer; but, never seem to be able to afford to buy one of our cds.

wind in your sails,
stephen mcphail
aka "uncle steve"
aka "spunkyuncle"