Please help my dad! Can't connect to hotmail

[Uberly]

Just had my Dad on the phone. He lost his internet connection last night and this morning. He phoned his provider and they reset his connection. However, now he can not connect to hotmail.

On IE he's getting a message saying "We were unable to return you to hotmail.co.uk, Internet Explorer has stopped trying to restore this website. It appears that the website continues to have a problem"

Using Google Chrome, he's getting a message saying that the sites security certificate is invalid and can't access it.

He also has his email account linked to his start menu, and can't connect from that.

I've tried helping him, but so far had no joy. Got him to update Java, but thats done nothing.

He's currently contacting his provider again, but on the first phone call they said that it isn't their problem as it's out of their remit!

Could it be something to do with his connection? Any suggestions hugely welcomed and grateful!! Thanks

I've just tried using Firefox and managed to connect to Hotmail.co.uk.

Will it connect if he types login.live.com/login into the url bar?

Dunno, will suggest that to him when I speak to him later.

I've tried hotmail and it's working here on IE. I just have a funny feeling that it's got something to do with when his router was reset.

Thanks

Has he tried rebooting the lot of it? Ie, turn computer and router off, give it a minute, router back on, then PC back on. It sounds like some kind of data miscommunication especially as he's getting completely different error messages on IE and Chrome. (Apologies if this has been tried, I know 'have you tried turning it off and on again' is the world's most irritating IT support response but it needs to be tried at least once.... :o )

That happened to me after a conn failure a couple of weeks ago. Ie said can't connect you to hotmail, chrome had another message , bizarrely it was fine on my phone. It was like that for abt 3 das then it sorted itself out.

Thanks everyone for all your suggestions.

Just spoken to Dad again. We tried typing in the address with https - no joy. He had already turned everything on and rebooted - no joy. He's also just spent another 45 mins with tech guy from broadband provider - no joy!

Kinda thinking it could be a virus. He's also told me of an additional problem of trying to access a site (e.g. BBC) and gets redirected to Ebay! Might take a few attempts to access the site he wants.

He's going to run a Spybot scan now. Fingers crossed!

Thanks again guys

Aha - yes, that would also tally with Chrome's report of an invalid certificate. That kind of redirect is almost always some sort of malware. If he has no luck with Spybot, try the free version of Malwarebytes, it's very good. That is assuming that whatever has infected his PC will let him download and install it, some of these are very tricksy. If that's the case, he's going to need a little more help, I think.

Thanks Naoko. I'll recommend Malwarebytes if Spybot doesn't do the job. Maybe if he tries to open it in safe mode it will download (if has no joy doing it normally). If not, it may be a case of taking it to be looked at which we want to avoid.

If you need to do it in safe mode, choose 'safe mode with networking', rather than just 'safe mode', or you won't have an internet connection. That can be a good way of getting around it so it's worth trying if it comes to that :)