XP can't login to Hotmail, nor Messenger

[leehinkleman]

An HP Pavillion, with XP Home, fails to open the owner's Hotmail account, failed to open my Hotmail account, and fails to allow Messenger to sign-in, and those accounts all seem to work OK when accessed from PCs other than this HP/XP.
When I saw the unknown 'Network Connection' entries 'Go In Direct' and 'minidialer', the lady owner seemed to think that those entries had appeared just recently.
Any help in explaining these problems would be appreciated.

 

[Masque]

Not sure if this is relevant, but messenger has been playing up the past few days with it logging off by itself and some users reporting not being able to log in !