Defunct Hotmail account won’t allow any use of Hotmail email

Microsoft says the Hotmail email account address which appears any time I am required to use Hotmail to send a query to a company does not exist...but when I type a currently operational Outlook email account into the address box before sending, Hotmail refuses that and pops up a message with the defunct address in it saying it cannot deliver the mail.  I have tried numerous times to recover a password for that supposedly defunct account, but Microsoft refuses the recovery process each time saying the account does not exist.  How can I get set up to be able to send Hotmail queries to companies that use such as the only way to contact them via email???