Yeah, Microsoft software is very flakey. I had a catch-22 type problem where I couldn't apply updates through the browser, which would just hang. Also, my email wouldn't work properly. I could receive messages, but couldn't send anything larger than a few words. Tried everything I could to fix it, followed all the suggestions I could find, but nothing worked.

The saving grace, however, was that I had automatic updates enabled. For a long time that didn't seem to do anything either, but as if by magic, I suddenly found one day that it had loaded around 50 updates. Had to reboot to apply them, then tried doing updates via the browser, and suddenly it was working. A whole lot of extra updates got loaded, and another reboot, but email still didn't work.

Tried re-installing my anti-virus S/W (Norton), but that didn't make any difference. Then tried installing a freeware anti-virus program (AVG), but without un-installing Norton first. Well, that clammed my email up completely, didn't work at all (perhaps not unexpectedly). So, uninstalled AVG, and as if by magic, my email started working perfectly (with Norton still installed).

Anyway, maybe try different browsers. I reckon its worth having more than one installed on your system, as sometimes things that don't work well in one browser may be fine in another. I've installed Firefox and Opera. I mainly use Firefox for most of my browsing, but I've left IE as the default.