My friends daughter is having trouble with her hotmail. They have winxp home. When she tries to sign in to hotmail it will not let her. She has a limited account on xp. With parental controls. Could this be the problem?? If so how can we fix it so she can email and send instant messages to her friends?
Thanks.

You refer to "Hotmail", then later to "Instant Messages". MSN Messenger is one of the programs that is used to create "Instant Messages" (IM). There are several other IM programs available as well; Yahoo, AOL, ICQ, and others.

Is this what your friends daughter is wanting to do? The programs can be downloaded free of change from their respective "home" sites.

Or is she wanting to sign-in and use the Hotmail email system? If this is what she wants, the problem may be with her handling of "cookies". In order for Hotmail to function, her computer must be set to allow cookies, or at least to allow Hotmail cookies.

To allow cookies, (In Internet Explorer) click on "Tools", then on Internet Options. In the Internet Options windows, click the "Privacy" tab. Select a lower value than what is already selected. You may need to select the "Low" value.

You can also just allow cookies from the Hotmail site. To do that, go to http://hotmail.com Attempt to sign in. When the page opens look at the bottom right side of the page for this icon:



Double click on that Icon, then right click on the Hotmail login page and select "Always Accept..." as shown in this image:



I hope this helps!

Dwight

Hey Dwight. Thanks for the reply. She uses msn messenger. Her mom is administrator. And has parental controls set through xp. Her mom can use msn and check her email. But the little girl cannot access either. Can it be the parental controls. I don't live near her so I cannot really help.

Will your friend shut off the Parental Controls long enough to see if doing that permits her daughter to sign-in to MSN Messenger? If so, then they'll know why she isn't able to sign-in. If releasing the controls doesn't solve the problem, try the following (copy/pasted from MSN Messenger Help).

When you try to sign in to MSN Messenger, you may receive the following error message:
We were unable to sign you in to the .NET Messenger Service.

Try the following to help resolve the situation:
1. Click the MSN Messenger icon in the taskbar (next to your clock), and then click Exit.
2. Make the following changes to your Internet options:
3. Click the Microsoft Windows Start button, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
4. Click Network and Internet Connections
5. Click Set up or change your Internet connection.
6. Click the Content tab.
7. Under Certificates, click Clear SSL State.
8. Click OK when you receive a confirmation.
9. Click the Advanced tab, and then scroll down to Security .
10. Make sure that Check for server certificate revocation (requires restart) is not selected, and that the Use SSL 2.0 and Use SSL 3.0 are selected.
If your computer is running Microsoft® Windows XP, clear the DNS resolver cache.

1. On the taskbar, click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the box, type cmd, and then click OK.
3. At the command prompt, type ipconfig /flushdns, and then press ENTER.
4. Try to sign-in to MSN Messenger again.

Or:

Sorry, we were unable to sign you in to the .NET Messenger service at this time. Please try again later. 80072f0d
–or–
We were unable to sign you in to the .NET Messenger service, possibly because of a problem with your Internet connection. Please try again later. 81000370
Try the following to help resolve the situation:
1. Click the MSN Messenger icon in the taskbar (next to your clock), and then click Exit.
2. Clear your Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) cache by doing the following:
1. Click the Microsoft Windows Start button, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Click Network and Internet Connections.
3. Click Set up or change your Internet connection.
4. Click the Content tab.
5. Under Certificates, click Clear SSL State.
6. When you receive a confirmation, click OK.
3. Reregister DLL files that are associated with Cryptographic Services by doing the following:
1. On the taskbar, click Start, and then click Run.
2. Copy the following, and paste it into the box:
regsvr32 softpub.dll wintrust.dll initpki.dll
3. Click OK.
4. When you receive each confirmation, click OK. The third confirmation may take a minute to appear, depending on your computer.
4. After the third confirmation, restart MSN Messenger and try to sign in again.

I hope something here will help.
Dwight