HELP! Can't login to Ebay/Hotmail on IE/Firefox

I am at the end of my rope......

My HD crashed two days ago. Unrecoverable so I installed a new one and loaded WinXP and all drivers. For some unknown reason I CANNOT login to Ebay or Hotmail. I can login to many other sites fine...can even get in to these two sites on another pc. Yes, I've tried IE 6 and Firefox and both have the same problem. It takes forever then doesn't connect. On IE I clicked on the "Privacy" icon on bottom toolbar and it shows that about 8 pages of Hotmail were blocked. I went in through there and clicked to "allow" all of those pages and have lowered setting to LOW on security, allow all cookies and allow hotmail as safe site.

I'm not sure what to do from here. I could really use some help. It's just mind boggling trying to understand why these two sites I can't login to since I installed XP. I was never able to get in.

Thanks!!!

Yup, it's very weird. I usually use Mozilla Firefox and for some reason I can't login to Ebay or Hotmail through either. I can login to any other site w/o issues. In fact, my neighbor logged into Ebay on my pc....very strange.


I have Norton Systemworks but have adjusted settings. I'm about to just wipe it clean and start all over again.

Oh.....the last time I tried to get into Hotmail acct I noticed a red checkmark on lower toolbar. I clicked on that and it brought up 7or8 URLs for msn.hotmail..etc - and showed they were all blocked. I dblclicked and chose "alllow" on them and still it wouldn't work. So for some reason it's a cookie issue. Which I've deleted cookies so many times I have Keebler on the brain.

Well I'm dumbfounded. I've already dumped Norton and rebooted - then tried
logging onto Ebay and Hotmail. Same thing happens. It sits and does nothing. Yet, I can login to other sites. I don't know what to try now.