Cannot download files/open attachments in IE, Windows Mail....

I cannot open any types of files sent by email in Windows Mail or Hotmail, of
downloaded documents through IE. Using a pretty new Dell laptop with Vista,
really need to get this sorted as I am a distance learning students with
loads of journal articles to download!

ANY advice would be really appreciated on this, I don't know where to start.

1. What happens when you try? If you get any error messages, please quote
the exact text.

2. You say "any types of files"; do you have the appropriate programs
installed that can open these files?

3. Are you saving the email attachments to your hard drive first? If not,
please try to do this and report.

4. Can you not download anything or just documents from a specific website?
Please give a fuller explanation of what happens.

5. What antivirus/security software do you have installed.

6. And never forget The First Question of Troubleshooting: did this ever
work and if yes, what changed between the time things worked and the time
they didn't?

I have the same problem. When I try to download an attachment from email or a file from any web site, the file download window opens but it never completes. The little progression thingy never calculates the size if the file. I checked to make sure that I didn't have to right click in the explorer window to allow the download. I checked my IE settings to see if I was preventing downloads and it doesn't look like I am. I can view streaming video on this machine, so it's not preventing everything from downloading, just those things that I want to save.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

-Cindy

Please make a new post with your own details instead of inserting your
problem into someone else's thread. Doing this, called "hijacking a
thread", makes helping both parties very difficult. Unless you have the
exact same hardware and software installed as the Original Poster, we can't
assume that you have "the same problem".

These links will help you with what details to include:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Usenet
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375 - How to Ask a Question

Thanks for setting me straight. I apologize.
-Cindy

It started happening to me also and what happens is, I will download it into a specific file and when it says download complete, I go into that same file and there is nothing in their. Can you please tell me what is wrong with my Pc.

I just played a round with my Pc just now and i found out that if you save you downloads into the downloads folder it will appear, and then you can put it into any folder you would like after that.