Question about Outlook Express

I have read MANY posts regarding this or similar problems with Live Mail, but NONE of the administrators has posted a satisfacxtory solution. I sure hope that changes this time, as I DESPERATELY need to get my mail working again. Here are the specifics for my case:

I have used Live Mail for the past two years or more, since it came with Windows 7 (64) on my Dell i7 laptop. Prior to that I ran the full version of Outlook. Until about 9 days ago I had never had a problem with Live Mail, and NOTHING has changed, settiings-wise. I also turned off automatic updates about a month ago, since several updates refused to install (as also noted by many others), so I'm pretty sure that no updates have caused me the following problems.

About 9 days ago I tried to send a large e-mail to a large number of people, but it didn't go out. It seems to have become "stuck" in the system, along with an error message that comes up whenever I tried to send anything else. It also blocks ALL succeeding attempts to send ANY messages, so I have have been dead for 9 days. However, I was able to receive mail. Based on "support" from my email provider (AT&T), I changed all my passwords and then tried again. The end result was that I was then NOT able to even receive any mail.

Based on the MS forums, I uninstalled ALL of Live Essentials and then reinstalled it all. I then tried to open Live Mail and got the error message that wldcore.dll was missing. After following several of the recommended steps, including several uninstalls and reinstalls, I found myself in the same situation as many others: Live Mail appears in my Programs window, but it does not appear in the removal window, so it cannot be easily uninstalled.

I followed the suggestion to use MSFixIt, and noticed, as many others have, that there were several installations of the Essentials suite listed, including LiveMail, LiveMessenger, Live Writer, etc. FixIt actually worked to remove each of the applications, although it was a very long, painstaking process to use it, since it had to be closed and then restarted for each of the many apps.  and several of them appear in MSFixIt.

I have now uninstalled and reinstalled Essentials several times and also uninstalled and reinstalled just Mail several times, always having to use FixIt, since the new installs do not appear in the Remove Programs window. For each single installation they appear at least twice in FixIt, which is still a very slow way to do an uninstall...but at least it works!

Is my only possible solution to just start over by reinstalling Windows 7? If so, please let me know the best way to solve this problem. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide, but please first review some of the other posts and don't just repeat them. Thanks again.

Lynn