the imap wont work w/o SSL but as far as ive been told the uni itself does scan those emails before they receive them so im sure i'll be save from those, the hotmail however is still a problem, when i set it the way you mentioned it says "127.0.0.1 could not be reached. The connection is refused"

check if

  1. the process ashMaiSv.exe is running
  2. you did not set PopListen item in avast4.ini
  3. port is set to 110 in the account
also when i try to send with these settings it asks for my password for the smtp server which i dont have.. and then refuses to send anything (for my uni account which can now receive atleast)

It should work with an arbitrary password, the authentication serves the only purpose - to send the server address from a mail program to avast (in the username field)