Thankyou Davehc and Drew for your prompt replies.
First of all,my son did indeed remove Live Essentials and then did a fresh install to no avail.
I did get a trial of an anti virus that I was trying for a month, so I just removed it and re-booted, but there was no difference. So I went and disabled the firewall, which is Windows Firewall, but that still did not allow me to send an email. All of the email settings are correct. I have checked them over and over again. So I don't know what else I can do. As I have said, I have no problem whatsoever in receiving emails. But each time I hit the button to create a new email message to send, the box comes up that says " A problem occured while trying to open this message. A problem has occured. Please try again." And there is a yellow icon with an exclamation mark in it.
I did read somewhere that changing the STMP Port to 587 was an option. Is that something I should try?? I am just at a loss, so if there is anything else you think I should try, I would be only too happy. T.I.A.