Thanks for your suggestions.It's nice to know there are people on the internet willing to help others.. In frustration i called Acer and a very nice chap there worked with me to try to solve this problem . We tried a number of things and when nothing was working he had me go to internet options...click advanced tab... then click restore advanced settings ( not re-set) ...Voila ...it worked and now as a bonus i no longer have a small window coming up, when i close programs, that used to say"internet explorer not working properly" I guess there was a conflict with windows 7 and possibly the settings i had for Internet Explorer.