Hello Paul,
Many thanks for your reply.
I think you may be right about some malware because something must have
altered the settings. I have managed to get back on line by going
through all the internet settings, (in a rather amateurish, ignorant
way). I restored default settings when there was that option and now
things seem to be working apart from Windows Defender, I cannot get it
to update - I keep getting the message that Defender was unable to
update error code 0x8007041d. I will google this code to see if I can
throw some light on the problem.
I did do a quick scan with Defender and that did not show any problems
but I don't know how useful that is without the updates.
I guess if all else fails I can do a factory reset but I hope that wont
be necessary.
Anyway Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to try and help, it
really is appreciated.
Regards,
John.

On 13/01/2015 20:08, Hachmeyer, Mr. Paul S. wrote:
> John,
> It's possible that you have some sort of virus or malware, a hardware problem or some other issue.  Network connection issues are sometimes hard to resolve.
> Are there any other computers connected successfully to the network, wired or wireless?  Are you sending theses emails from the same network?
> Do you have any virus or malware software installed on the computer?  If so, I would run a full scan and see if anything is detected.
> Next, try to determine if you are an administrator on the computer.  I don't have win 8, only win 7, but if you can go to start, then control panel then user (or user access) you should see one or more user names, domains and groups.   If it only lists you and it says 'administrator' in the group, then you are an administrator on the laptop.
> In control panel, there is also a tab for 'Network and Internet'.  Open that and click on 'network connections'.  There may be more than one, does it (or all of them) say disabled?  Double click on it (or them) one at a time, then try clicking the diagnose tab.
> Write back to the list with the results and see if any other ideas come up to help troubleshoot your problem.
> Paul
>
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