Problems with Windows Live Mail

I have been contacted about unwanted, sudden changes to Windows Mail… like the font changes, you can’t access attachments, or the frame that showed the content of the current message you are on in the message list goes away. Here is some information:

{From http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1207873&posted=1#post1207873, AnneMarie}

Windows Mail relies on functions provided by Internet Explorer for many of its features. Internet Explorer 9, which is installed automatically in Windows Vista via Windows Update, changes some of those functions so that Windows Mail features are adversely impacted and no longer work properly. Users see the following impairments:
a. The default message viewing font is no longer what is specified in Windows Mail via Tools | Options | Read | Fonts (for instance, the user may have Arial selected but with IE 9 installed sees Times New Roman instead).
b. Messages which include attachments no longer indicate they have attachments and the attachments cannot be saved (no paperclip indicator is present and File | Save Attachments is disabled).
c. Messages which have linked images embedded in them no longer display the yellow information bar to enable showing the images.
Uninstalling IE 9 rectifies these problems. Workarounds also exist to overcome some of these bugs:
a. For the font specification issue, one can go to Tools | Internet Options | Fonts in IE 9 and then change the default font there and then the default font in Windows Mail will be that font. One can also use MS-MVP Grzegorz Niemirowski's OE Power Tool (http://www.grzegorz.net/oe/oept.php) to create a custom css file and dictate the proper font that way.
b. For the attachments issue, if the user goes to Tools | Options | Read and checks the option to read messages in plain text only, then after reopening the message one can again see the paperclip and save the attachments. Or one can open the message in a separate message window, rather than reading via the preview pane window, and then one is able to save the attachments from the attachment toolbar (but not from File | Save Attachments).
c. For the infobar issue, if one opens the message in a separate window, then the info bar will appear again. One could also go to Tools | Options | Security and uncheck the option to block linked images, but that would then reopen the user up to spam, so it is not advised.
Microsoft has been largely unresponsive to MVP requests for fixes to these bugs, so the user is stuck with either employing the workarounds or just uninstalling IE 9.

And then I got this from another website, regarding the missing preview pane:

On my version of Windows live I clicked on "view/ then in the top center of the window are four boxes. One of the boxes says "reading pane". Just click on that then select "off". It worked for me. I imagine there are different versions of Windows Live mail out there but this worked for me. Most trojans that were caught by my anti virus software were trojans coming through my email. Leaving the preview pane open is a bad idea.