Suddenly blue links in Mail message no longer open

Question

Assisting an elderly relative. He has a six year old iMac running Tiger. Uses Apple Mail
He has two mail accounts. One from his ISP (POP) and an IMAP account for his AOL mail. The latter is the account into which most of his messages come.
Suddenly last week he finds that hyperlinks in any mail message no longer open. Formerly he clicked on the blue link and the link opened in Safari.
Now nothing happens when he clicks on a blue link which has been included in a mail message. Control clicking on the link also does not work.
What might have gone wrong and how do we fix this?
(His browser is working perfectly ; links on a web page open)

Answer 1

Hi Barbara,
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
If perchance you can't find your install Disc, at least try it from the Safe Boot part onward.
Also, Very Important, how much Free Space is on your Hard Drive first of all? Click on the Macintosh HD on the Desktop, then do a Get Info on it.