What Dave and Don said.
Also, ms defaults file identification to "turn off file extensions for known file types" or some such phrasing. It's a dangerous thing like so many of the ms defaults. Often malware and viruses will create names like "somefile.pdf.exe"; ms hides the ".exe" part and you think it's "somefile.pdf" then when you click to see what you think is a document you instead run the malware executable.
Dump outhouse express for reasons stated. I use Pegasus for email - it's pretty much malware bulletproof. And Free.
http://www.pmail.com/
Your system configuration can be a complete unknown if you use AOL as your provider. They modify the o/s and do so many other things that are, shall we say, unhelpful.
Overall, it sounds to me like you need a full system reinstall or professional diagnosis. Hope your critical data is backed up.