Links within email suddenly no longer work

Clicking on a link within an email has worked fine since I installed Windows Live Mail a year or two ago. Today, each time I click on a link I get an error message similar to this: Windows cannot find 'http://www.microsoft.com/ Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again I can cut and paste the link and it opens fine in Firefox. Vista Home Premium 32bit Firefox is my default browser. I checked Control Panel/Default Programs/SetYourDefaultPrograms/Firefox and it says "This program has all its defaults" This is not a Security issue. I allow images and external content from my Trusted Senders list but I get the same error message on those mail links. I don't know if the problem is related but Live Mail has been flaky recently when closing. Not always but often. I close the program and when I try to re-open it later nothing happens. When I check Task Manager it shows two instances of wlmail.exe running. I have to close those and then the program will open ok. This problem is not consistent. It happens once every few days. It's annoying but not serious. Being unable to click links is serious. I've tried to research the problem here but none of the suggestions have worked and most of them were related to Outlook versions before Live Mail. Thanks for any advice.

There are 2 solutions I can think of.
1. System Restore (If that doesn't work, try #2)
2. In Control Panel, click "uninstall" for WLM, then click "repair"

rhlhamlet said:

There are 2 solutions I can think of.
1. System Restore (If that doesn't work, try #2)
2. In Control Panel, click "uninstall" for WLM, then click "repair"

Click to expand...

I tried Repair but I get an error message at the end saying "Mail couldn't be installed because we had trouble installing this requirement" Mail still works but the links still don't work.