F_S_D
Many thanks for the reply.
I make it a habit of running 'SpyBot S&D' regularly. Ran it again after your suggestion. Nothing unusual came up. An excellent program I might add.
Also, the total number of e-mail messages in my in-box was nothing out of the ordinary.
The hardware firewall is a by-product of the LynkSys router I use because the desktop is on a cable feed that is shared with a Compaq laptop running Win 98SE, IE 5.5. No problems with Hotmail on that system. It's only on Win XP.
The software firewall is part of 'Norton System Works' which I've had on my system for 2 years now. It's a set of programs that I really like and has been problem free for me.
BoeingBus2002
Again, thanks for your reply which got me thinking. I've had problems in the past with upgrades to MSN Messenger and IE6 on my Win 98SE Laptop. On the two occasions that I've upgraded to IE6 and a higher version of MSN Messenger on Win98, I've had problems, and have removed the upgrade and reverted back to IE 5.5 and the previous version of MSN Messenger.
I just went back over the recently downloaded updates and discovered that MSN Messenger 6.0 was one of the programs downloaded.
I went to Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs/ and removed Messenger 6.0. Then I tried Hotmail to see what would happen.
Guess what! Problem solved! No more freeze-ups. Everything is back to normal.
Also, going to the Start Menu, selecting Programs, and I find Windows Messenger. Tried it, and it's working normally.
I surmise that it must be a glitch in the Messenger 6.0 program that is effecting Hotmail page loading on my machine.
Again folks, many thanks for the replies. The suggested fix led me to the answer.
Cheers