My avast has updated today and whilst I can log into my hotmail, I cannot get in my in box to read my mail. I have XP. can anyone help? >:(
What error messages are you getting?
What is your firewall?
If you have zone alarm pro the privacy settings of high can have this effect.
Besides answering David’s questions, can you tell us if you’re using WebMail to get your messages into Hotmail, I mean, your browser or, on contrary, an email program?
I experience the same problem. I am using ZoneAlarm Pro 6.0 with the lastest version. I cannot get access to my Hotmail account. I am forced to log out every time when I press “Mail” in my account through Firefox. I enable ZoneAlarm’s Cookie Control (Medium Level). I have to terminate (not Pause. It does not work at all) Web Shield to get into my mailbox. :-\
I do not see any error message in either Firefox or avast! I could not solve the problem by adding hotmail.com and msn.com to the exclusion list in Web Shield. I can only solve the problem by manually disabling Cookie Control. Adding hotmail.com and msn.com to exclusion list under Privacy Control does not work too. Is there any way except disabling Privacy Control to resolve the problem?
Must I install ZoneAlarm Free Edition? :-\
Read help that follows with zonealarm.
You may be wil get some answers there about how to configure it.
Try lowering or the privacy settings to the lowest setting and see if that is sufficient.
As you see disable them completely and it should work without having to exclude MSN.com or hotmail.com the idea of the exclusions is so that you don’t have to lower the overall privacy setting.
Having to disable the privacy completely to me is the lessor option to installing the free version, because the pro version has more functions other than the privacy control, not to mention there are other cookie and ad management tools, especially for firefox extensions.
It must disable Cookie Control in order to gain access to my mailbox. Excluding addresses from Privacy Control does not help. Very strange. >:( Now, I switch back to ZoneAlarm Free Edition…I hope that either avast! or ZoneLabs can fix this bug.
Why would you want to switch to the free version if you bought the pro?(don’t tell me that was a joke ;D ), just disable the darn privacy settings…And people have been waiting for a fix for quite some time now… 
I’m glad i use Kerio…
Cheers
Mikey
Just leave the privacy disabled going back to the free version which doesn’t have the privacy function would be crazy as it has better protection than the free version.
There is a Topic on these forums about a Zone Alarm firewall bypass vulnerability in the free version (and many other firewalls) that isn’t vulnerable in the Pro version.
I think I will not be that unlucky victim. 
I will install that Pro version on my other computer with AVG Free Edition. And I will switch to Free Edition + avast! Home Edition on my personal computer. 
Why trust to luck when you are talking about your system security :
it’s your system do whatever you like.