Windows Live Mail problem with attachments that include images

I presently use Vista Home Premium (2008) and the Windows Live Mail program associated with Vista. An older version of Office Professional Outlook contacts is on the hard drive but this has never interferred with Live Mail in the past...more for my reference than anything else. Recently when I try to forward an email that includes images or an email received from someone else, the email does not go through properly. The recipient gets a multi part email with a lot of gibberish. They often receive 20+ copies of the initial email BUT each contains a lot of letters and references to MIME multi parts but no message. I have sent the same email to my smart phone acct (same as my Live Mail acct on my computer) to "see" what the corrupt email looks like. I see the same issues, no images, and a lot of letters instead of the word copy.  My email text is set to HTML for send / receive messages. I've mad no changes to settings... is this a driver issue? If so, how do I correct what's "wrong". Thankyou.