A funny thing happened on the way to replying to my emails

Hi all.
When I went to reply to a very important email this a.m. I was unable to do so. When I clicked 'reply' a page came up with a blank address and subject area, and no place in which to compose the reply. Usually of course the email address is automatically filled in and a section comes up where you compose. I retried half a dozen times, tried 'reply all', nothing changed. Then went to compose and that brought up the same kind of page, with address area but no where to compose. This is my main, paid for email service, given by my isp. So I called them and was told I needed a Java program. Gee, I didn't need it last night, and received no message saying I needed it or to update. I asked the isp what Java I needed, but they didn't know, just gave me a website to go to. Went there. Clicked download and learned they were going to give me
an 11 MEGABYTE PROGRAM!!
I am badly stressed for memory, about to take an online course. 11 mb would really stress my computer I think. I need to know if this is necessary, or if I have other options. I tend to think this may be a fault with the isp, and its an easier fix to just have me put a load of stuff on my computer, as this has not happened before. What do you all think?
Sheena

 

Scarced Or What!

For starters I would highly recommend keeping Java on your computer because there are many web applications
that require Java.
You don't need a specific version you just need to download it and allow it to update when nessasary.
11MB is absolutly nothing at all so I would drop the cause of consern.

Now lets address the blank page problem...
- What Email client are you using i.e. OutLook?
- If not using a Email client and using web browser what browser are you using?
- What Email provider are you using?

I would like to know whether the issuse has been resolved before going any further to addressing the issue.

 

Hi Deadartic.
Thanks for your input. I am running fat xpprof on an old computer, have 512 mb of ram, 76% used. Beginning an online course. I worry about memory.
Yes, the issue has been resolved. It just didn't seem to me like the fault was with me as everything had worked well yesterday. I went back online with a different browser from Firefox; ie, and the email program still wouldn't allow me to compose. I clicked on the error icon in the ie taskbar and got the following message which I barely understand and perhaps someone here will. It said: /eonapps/ft/wm/page/compose
line 803, char1986, error:expected ']' nxt was line 377, char7, errorbj.expected, code0.
"problems with this web page might keep it from functioning properly"

To me the above seemed to indicate something other than a need to have Java, but I wasn't sure, however, it does say there was a problem with the page.
I called my isp back, fought my way to a supervisor, and he said there might be a problem with a proxy server relating to the accelerator I'd gotten from them a few days ago. We excluded that proxy server from the email compose page, and that seemed to have solved it as when I went back on line the compose and reply functions worked fine.
Would be interesting if someone could decode the above error messages.
sheena

 

Don't worry about the Java. It won't use up 11MB of your RAM. The 11MB Java download is referring to storage space on your hard drive.