Windows Live Hotmail (former Hotmail) is one of – if not the most – popular free webmail applications on the planet, so naturally there’s a bit of an uproar (warning: highly emotional teenager grunts here) since apparently users have been unable to access their mail account for hours on end. We’ve been getting a lot of tips about this in our inboxes, so we ended up taking a look at the official Windows Live Help website, where this message appears:
Hotmail and Windows Live ID experienced a service disruption starting at 8:44 PM (PST), which ended at 10:15 PM (PST), and during this disruption you may have been told your inbox did not exist. This was incorrect messaging. Your inbox, contacts and Live ID are all intact. We’re all Hotmail customers, so we appreciate how frustrating this experience was. Thanks for your understanding. If you’re still getting errors, please close out all browsers and sign in again.
It’s after midnight in California at the time of this writing, so according to Microsoft the service disruption should have stopped over 2 hours ago. The problem is that most of the tips we received came in after that time (and keep on coming), so the issue doesn’t seem to have been resolved completely, provided of course the tipsters have effectively tried to restart their browsers.
Just tried my hotmail and it worked fine! First time i logged in today though
Please can you tell me how to get into
my E-Mail acc.
Have things changed recently. A S A P.
Thankyou.
Thanks for your suggestions and information but i think that’s valid only for inactive accounts.
Correct me if i’m wrong.
Nope, it was for active hotmail accounts. Both me and my friend were locked out of our hotmail last night — very annoying. But not the first time I’ve experienced hotmail service disruptions. I should just transfer all my email over to GMail
Not only inactive accounts were inaccessible. My hubby and I could not get into our accounts, past even midnight EST – and we use our accounts every day.
test
My hotmail.com accounts have been locked out since 11pm CST yesterday. Glad to see my techdevils.com account is up or I would be in trouble.
works for me.
We run a fairly large web site that I do not want to mention on TC, due to competitive reasons. The website is quite innovative, like Twitter, and has 4M registered users and 7M uniques per month.
The audience is mostly teens, so TC web2.0 crowd may not know it. Anyway, we encountered about 1.5yrs ago that hotmail does not deliver our email. Not even to junk folder, just does not deliver, period. The only solution was to signup for a racket called “bonded sender” or “senderscore”, that is a hotmail partner, delivering the email for $1000/yr. We do not have any delivery problems with gmail or Yahoo. We do not want to pay the racket as a matter of principle, so we created an automated warning on signup that recommends users to use yahoo or gmail emails, and that we do not guarantee hotmail delivery. I believe we signed up at least 1m users for gmail this way. Peanuts for arrogant MSFT “anti-spam specialists”, but this is our two cents!
Having the same issue as you. But we can’t even pay the SenderScore extortion fee because we do not have enough US traffic for their data collection. Hotmail support usually resets their filters when we complain and everything runs OK for a few months.
thats not a hotmail thing — but a general industry “thing”. kind of like FICO scores (I dont see you bitching about them) or CLUE reports for homes or life insurance risk scores etc…
everyone does it (right or wrong).
Except that Google happened to do it right, and MSFT happened to do it wrong.
There’s much bigger quality difference between Hotmail and Gmail than between Experian and Equifax.
A post related to this news is already featured before in http://www.inka...not-so-hot/286/
i just used our account and it worked ok …
i logged in ok but my inbox and everything is gone… but my messenger contact updates are there?
Logging in all day (in Japan) to my (.com) account… been working fine without problem.
Looks like they pulled a “GFail“. But just because MS wants to catch Google in search, doesn’t mean they should start taking tips from them in online apps.
It is really interesting to see TC cover hotmail outage but not the paralysis of the entire valley !!!
Everyone needs to just switch to Gmail… Hotmail hasn’t been cool since like 1997 and even then it was a spam trap.
Oh yes…look at Gmail’s uptime (or lack thereof).
Ooops. Fail.
Works fine here
No problem here also..
I am able to login just fine, but the inbox is gone. Make sure you are checking that…
hmm I don’t have a hotmail account, but I’m glad that all worked out just fine, nothing is perfect.
It also locked me out of my Adcenter account. Luckily I paused my campaign before it happened.
Robin,
You forgot to mention that Yahoo’s email service also went down yesterday – http://news.cne...mp;subj=Webware
I guess that is because the name of the company was not Microsoft.
We don’t have any problem now. İs any differences between regions or countries?
HOtmail
I used to have a Hotmail account, but I don’t anymore. I was to often really disappointed. Gmail is great. And fast.
Sigh. This gets old fast. We use Hotmail for our work e-mail and couldn’t access it.
Seriously, as much spam and trash that fills up my email inbox it is just insane to even *consider* using Hotmail as a company e-mail solution. *shudders* Your company desperately needs another email service solution as soon as possible.
Wow, that is a gutsy, throw caution to the wind move on the part of your company.
I know Google never goes down. Really. Gmail is out of beta. Really.
Hotmail has been sucking lately! I tried 3 browsers (Firefox, IE and Chrome) and couldn’t get to my inbox yesterday. This morning I can get into my inbox but can’t click on any links in Firefox and when I tried IE, every time I click a link it says “Hotmail is not available – try again later” when I’m already in my inbox! Quite frustrating…I’m switching to gmail this weekend. BOO on MSN!!
I’ve been getting that exact same error since late March!
Guys READ!!! Yes it was out last night and 100’s of users were not able to access… If you look at that yahoo answers link and the windows live help, you will see!!! I was afraid of losing my emails till I saw everyone else was down too!!!
I haven’t opened my hotmail account for about 4 years now. But it seemed that it took them 2 hours to resolve this technical issue which is a poor technical resolution performance.
4 years? It’s dead my friend. 6 months of inactivity will do it.
I wonder how many businesses are using Hotmail as their email solution. It’s got to be difficult whenever this happens to trust a free service with your business.
Yeah, switch to Gmail–from the company that makes money by snapping pics of your house and by tracking your web browsing. Oh yeah–they would just love to store all your medical records online for you too. But don’t worry, they take your privacy VERY seriously.
For a second I thought was ANOTHER gmail outage. Kind of used it from Google.
I was locked out of my Gmail account this evening. Works now though. I’ve heard horror stories in the past of users losing all their email. I think I should backup my email more often.
not conncting properly my account at hotmail.live
Though for a little time, but made me worried…. now working fine..!
yea, my acct is locked out too.I have ads on e-bay and craigslist…..mon apr.13.what is anybody doing about it.and what im i suppose to do????????????
yea, my acct is locked out too.I have ads on e-bay and craigslist…..mon apr.13.what is anybody doing about it.and what im i suppose to do????????????
After an update last week which locked me out of my account, I now have two in boxes and cannot delete any emails. I am going to quit hotmail!
hey bitch
I can’t get into my E-Mail Acc. Have things changed lately. Please can you let me know a.s.a.p.
Thankyou.
I still can’t get my email on my laptop. From any other computer I can. Whats my problem? It just keeps clicking back and forth.