Why won't hotmail work?

July 22, 2006 12:11 AM

Why haven't I been able to connect to hotmail?

For about a week now, hotmail and a handful of other sites (but not all) have been unaccessable from my laptop.

They work fine from other computers on the house network, indicating that the problem's at my end.

I ran a troubleshoot using a Windows Messenger tool: it said I had a problem with my 'Key Ports'. What does this mean, and what should I do about it?

posted by King_Wang to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

We'll need some more details, I think, to make a full diagnosis. I'll make a few guesses:

-Can you not see the hotmail page at all? Or are you able to get to the front page, but unable to login? If the latter, try this.

-You might have also somehow blocked port 443 (the port for SSL - secure transmissions). Check your firewall in that case (both the Windows one and a third part one if you've got it.)

-Have you checked for spyware? That might also be the problem - but this seems unlikely given that you can get to other pages. Just in case, though, it's always a good idea to download and run Adaware.

Post again, and let us know how it goes.
posted by Drunken_munky at 12:45 AM on July 22, 2006

also, which browser are you using and have you tried others?
posted by juv3nal at 1:41 AM on July 22, 2006

Response by poster: I'm running Firefox: when I tried on IE it made no difference.

Drunken_Munky: I had a play around with the firewall - it seemed to work: MSN messenger now connects at least.

However, now I get a new error message, telling me Norton Internet Security is banning my access to hotmail. Have I been over-zealous & disabled too much firewall?
posted by King_Wang at 1:57 AM on July 22, 2006