I think what Karl means is can you access your hotmail account using your browser (instead of trying to access it using Outlook Express). In your first post you said "Firefox is fine." I interpreted that to mean you had suceeded in using Firefox to read your Hotmail mail.
If you did not do that before, then try now:
open firefox, type www.hotmail.com in the Location Bar, press Enter this will redirect you to http://login.live.com/login.srf?wa=wsignin1.0&rpsnv=11&ct=1252006258&rver=5.5.4177.0&wp=MBI&wreply=http:%2F%2Fmail.live.com%2Fdefault.aspx&lc=1033&id=64855&mkt=en-US ;-))
then you should be able to Sign In and read your mail.