Hi, I'm a bit of a numpty when it comes to technical stuff with the computer but I've not had this problem before and I've stumped the ISP help desk who thinks it may be software related.

Last night I started having trouble with my net connection. WinMail (Vista Home Basic x64) was set up to check for emails every 2 minutes and has never been an issue before. I usually connect via my broadband connection and then open WinMail. However when I do that now, it drops out and then the dialog boxes relating to connecting, registering on the network etc. start coming up. Now this happens every 2 minutes so obviously related to WinMail somewhere. I haven't changed any settings. Prol the only thing I have done recently is set up the connection for my kids under their user accounts and set up another email account for myself through WinMail, but again this was working fine.

Tried rebooting to see if that would fix the problem - it didn't. I also note that I no longer have the little icon down bottom right on the taskbar to tell me I'm connected. This problem doesn't seem to happen if I don't have WinMail open and I can surf to my little numpty heart's content.

ISP suggested I ring Microsoft ... but I know their first comment will be 'subscribe to our help' blah blah blah.

Can someone incredibly brilliant help me out? I can find my way around the computer so I'm not a complete dummy.

Nobody???