This is not a hardware problem.  It could be your ISP or it could just be hotmail when you are trying to access it.  I had to change my Hotmail access point a month or so ago as they changed the way it was accessed. 

Your mother, apparently, is in a different physical location so it's not relevant to your problem.

Try posting this on the Other Software or the section for your specific Operating System and you may get more responses.

Hi There,

While it has a nice look to it, and is easy to sign up for;  Hotmail often goes on the blink at times.  I think it is sometimes a worm attack against MS.  Then often it is just a situation where they are just working on the system.  Wait a day or so and see if it just doesn't clear up on its own.  I need to switch, but have had it so long, I hate to have to notify everyone I know of an address change.  Yes, I know.....It is aggravating not to be able to access your mail.  You might try swithching to Yahoo mail.  You can still keep your MSN Messenger.

It may be neither. I recently ran into a problem where I could access certain sites from 1 partition but not from another. I use the same ISP on both partitions. Something became corrupted. I eventually wiped out that problematic partition (it was XP ) and reloaded it from scratch.