I inherited my mother's laptop and was happy to see that Office 2010 was loaded onto it. However I have been unable to get Outlook to load and was hoping to find some advice here. It's a Toshiba laptop with Windows 7. Here is what happens when I start Outlook.

First a window with this message appears: The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action. When I click OK, another window called Exchange opens with just two fields. 1) Microsoft Exchange Server which has att.net in there. that was my mother's ISP. So I put comcast.net in there as that is my ISP. 2) mailbox which had mom's name in it so I put my name in there. I clicked “check name” and another window opens that says this: The name cannot be resolved. The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action. I click OK to this and one more window says this: Cannot open your default email folders. the file "path name with .ost at the end" is listed and then it says "is not an Outlook data file".

I cannot figure out how to get Outlook to open so that I can change any settings. any ideas on how to get it to load?

thanks in advance for any help.