When attempting to attach compressed photos to a new email in Hotmail the following message appears: “Internet Explorer has blocked this site from using an ActiveX control in an unsafe manner. As a result, this page might not display correctly”. Therefore I cannot attach photos unless they are standard (non-compressed) files which are significantly larger than the compressed files. How can I get around this problem?

Having not used Hotmail myself for a while I was initially unsure what you meant by attaching “compressed photos” to the email as opposed to “standard (non-compressed) photos”. However, doing a bit more research revealed that Hotmail has a feature whereby you can upload resized versions of the photos. This seems to load an ActiveX component which is responsible for resizing the photos to a smaller size more suitable for transmission through email. In your case it seems that Internet Explorer is blocking the ActiveX component from working correctly thus causing an error and the inability to upload these compressed (resized) photos. Uploading the photos without compression does not appear to be an issue, so I imagine this is because the standard file upload will upload the original photo files (i.e. at their original size) so it does not require the ActiveX component to resize the photos.

However, before going further into the discussion about this particular problem it would be worthwhile to discuss what is an ActiveX component for the benefit of those readers who are not familiar with these types of components. ActiveX components (also known as ActiveX controls) are used within web pages to provide additional features or functions not available through a standard web page, such as displaying animations or possibly processing data (such as resizing images). You can think of ActiveX controls much like Java applets or Flash applications embedded into a web page. All such controls (be it Java, Flash, or ActiveX) require add-ons in the browser to display, as the browser does not understand what these components embedded in a web page are unless they have a plug-in or helper application installed in the browser to render these components. While Java and Flash are cross-platform, ActiveX is more targeted towards Windows Internet Explorer and it is only officially supported in the Internet Explorer family of web browsers. This is why certain websites such as Windows Update (windowsupdate.microsoft.com) will only work with Internet Explorer since it uses ActiveX controls to determine which updates are required for your computer. The power of using an ActiveX control for the photo upload utility is that the original photos do not need to be uploaded to the server for resizing – instead, the ActiveX control running on your computer can resize the photos before they are uploaded. This means that you are only uploading the resized photos (rather than the original photos) thus making the upload process quicker for you.

Now that we have a better understanding of the purpose of ActiveX controls we can specifically look at the issue that you are experiencing. It is strange that Internet Explorer blocks the ActiveX control since this behaviour is usually found when a web page attempts to execute a potentially malicious or untrusted ActiveX control. This is an important security feature of Internet Explorer since you do not want an ActiveX control running on your computer which could potentially cause damage or steal data. Obviously the ActiveX control on the Hotmail website should be safe since it is a trusted website run by Microsoft. Doing some research on this issue I have found other users who have experienced exactly the same problem and successfully fixed the issue, so we will look at some procedures that you can attempt as part of the resolution process.

We will start by specifically adding the Hotmail website to your list of Trusted sites so that it is not subject to the same level of security restrictions as other websites that you may visit. Login to your Hotmail and once you are at the Inbox screen go to the Internet Explorer “Tools” menu > “Internet Options”. In the Internet Options window that appears, click the “Security” tab. You will see there are four zones: Internet, Local intranet, Trusted sites and Restricted sites. When you visit a website it is placed into one of these categories and the relevant security policies are applied. For example, most websites you visit will be classified in the Internet category (and you will see the text “Internet” with a globe icon in the bottom status bar of the browser). Likewise, Internet Explorer can also detect when you are visiting a website on your own network and it will automatically place that site in the Local intranet category (which has less restrictive security policies than the Internet zone, because presumably there are no web pages on your local network which are malicious). However, for a site to be categorised in the last two categories (Trusted sites or Restricted sites) you need to specifically add the website address into the category.

We are going to add the Hotmail site to the Trusted sites category as this is subject to the lowest restrictions (since sites which you manually add to Trusted sites are assumed to be approved and deemed safe by you). Select “Trusted sites” and click the “Sites” button. You will find that the website address has been automatically filled in the “Add this website to the zone” text field. However, we need to do some modifications because each time you visit the site it may direct you to a slightly different address (just given the way that Hotmail works). Therefore, change the address in the bar to http://*.live.com. Untick the “Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone” and click the “Add” button. Repeat the procedure and add the address https://*.live.com (don’t forget the s after http) to add all pages under the live.com domain (in both secure https and insecure http modes) to the trusted sites list. Click “Close” then OK. Close Internet Explorer and then reopen and attempt to access your Hotmail account. You may now see in the bottom of the browser that the website is classified in the “Trusted sites” zone with a green tick, instead of the “Internet” zone shown on previous visits. That said, it may also say “Unknown Zone (Mixed)” which we will discuss more about below, so don’t worry if it says this instead. In either case, check whether you can now use the image upload utility correctly.

If the problem continues it is possible that the image upload utility is running from a different domain than the live.com domain, and thus is not subject to the Trusted zone security settings. This is particularly likely to be the case if the zone is listed as “Unknown Zone (Mixed)” indicating that the elements on the page come from a mixture of different zones (most likely the Trusted zone and the Internet zone). Therefore, we should check that the settings for the Internet zone also allow the execution of secured and verified ActiveX controls. Return to the “Tools” menu > “Internet Options” and click the “Security” tab. Select “Internet” and click “Custom Level” near the bottom of the window. The “Medium-high” settings have the correct level of security so we will reset all of the settings to this level. At the bottom of the window in the “Reset to” drop down box, select “Medium-high (default)” and click “Reset” so that all the settings reset to their default medium-high settings. Once this has been done click OK to save and close the settings then restart Internet Explorer and check whether the problem continues.

Should problems persist then please contact me again for further advice.