[1]
'Installed' latest version 6.x of Internet Explorer. Eliminated many kinds of freeze-up during email access.
[2]
[Answer two is approximate: I will check the customer's machine and re-post.]
Allowed cookies and minimal scripting from:
msn.com
passport.net
something-passport dot something ?
[check back here or check for yourself]
2 different IP address numbers
[I will post them when I get back to my customer's machine]
[3]
Sometimes things go wrong, then work again. I think it's one of those 'trusted affiliates' with an advert on the msn.com homepage. I THINK msn.com sometimes blocks you until msn.com receives back-door acknowledgement from an affiliate proving you have accepted the affiliate's cookie and run the affiliate's script.
For my customer, trouble comes from the strict scripting limits which I set; for most msn.com visitors, I think there are bugs in whatever scripting is used, especially if my acknowledgment theory is correct.
Two months ago, my customer's hotmail failed miserably, then restored itself. I heard there had been 100k complaints at that same time, from users all over the place.
The real fault lies with those jerks [oops, I mean ill-considered policies
] at msn, hotmail, and microsloth. Don't make websites that REQUIRE certain versions of browsers, and don't REQUIRE scripting to operate a site [at least provide <no script> alternative HTML on all pages].