Hotmail Problems?

[Fazor]

Hey, I haven't been able to access hotmail all day (no page to display error). From time to time too much traffic makes the site go down, but I haven't been able to access it since 9:00am and it's now 3:30pm, generally not down that long.

So I thought maybe it was my browser. Cleared the cache and cookies and everything, but still it doesn't work. If I go to www.hotmail.com I get redirrected to a google search result for "www.hotmail.com". If I go to msn.com and click the hotmail link dirrectly, that's when I get the "no page to display" error.

So was wondering, anyone else here use hotmail and been having any problems today, or is it just me? And to think, I even deffended Bill Gates when that story came out about MS and its wikipedia entry last week. Now he goes and cuts of my e-mail service! That jerk! :-P

[Gillianren]

I was just there, no problems. I do occasionally have times when I can't access my e-mail, but not often enough for me to bother changing it--I've had the same address since the 90s.

[Moose]

Dunno. They're probably just having server trouble. It happens. MSN can have entire weeks where the machines yo-yo.

Had something odd just happen, though. Got an email from Facebook claiming somebody named Stratton added me as a friend.

I did a search on his claimed hotmail account name, and the only reference was that he'd apparently tried his luck at getting a bunch of game stuff duped for him for some Diablo-like game (T'wern't either Diablo, though. I'd have recognized some of the items.) Dunno how that all worked out for him.

Not a clue who that is. I don't really recognize that name from any of the message boards I frequent, and am not especially keen on signing up to facebook to run this down.

It's probably just confirmation spam anyway.

[Judy]

I've been using hotmail as my primary email account for about 15 years now and this current outage is the longest ever. I've been trying to access it since 8am GMT this morning and it is no 4.15pm and it is still not responding. This is the message I get:

Due to an internal error your request cannot be processed. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again later.

My husband can access his account fine but my account, even from a different computer, just doesn't work. This makes me think that it is a problem at the hotmail end.

Is anyone else having this problem?

Judy

[Serenitude]

Alot of the time, if you clear out your cache and retry, it'll cure the problem. It also works for log-in problems ;)

[Judy]

Thanks, Serenitude. That's the first thing I did. Nada. I have a feeling it's at the Hotmail/MS end. I just wonder how long it can continue.

It's still not working.

J.

[Gillianren]

Welcome, Judy. Mine's okay.

[Serenitude]

Yep, just checked mine, and it's ok. How often do you log in? Free accounts expire after so long.

Sorry, I don't mean to be flippant. I just can't think of what else the problem could be if everyone else's is working ok :eh:

[Neverfly]

Hotmail has a notoriety for being "touchy" actually. One computer here at my house cannot Display Hotmail at all.. It goes to the page.. but the page is always blank. No matter what. ive never figured it out and two IT folks and a networker were baffled by it.

and then theres Messenger LOL which is equally as troublesome. I wrote some patches for friends who Could NOT seem to sign on- a simple registry change was all that was needed but they would have gotten confused if i told them how to do it- so i just sent a patch instead.

[Whirlpool]

i dont have any problems with mine.... so far. :)

[Judy]

Thanks for all of your concern and assistance. My account is now back to normal....but not after some degree of angst since it is my primary account and I use it all the time. One suggestion to someone who can't even get the opening page, you may want to go to your internet options and designate msnialogin.passport.com as an allowed site.

Last night I googgled my way a Hotmail support site and sent a message about my problems. This morning this response was in my reactivated account which I wouldn't have received if my account was still down (!):

Thank you for writing to MSN Hotmail Technical Support. My name is Jervin and you mentioned that you are receiving the "Server Temporarily Unavailable" error when trying to access your account.

I understand how important it is for you to gain access to your account. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

I apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced. The server that hosts your account has just undergone regular maintenance to ensure optimum performance. The maintenance process has been completed and your account should now be accessible. If you get the same error as you login, please let us know so we can investigate further.

You are a valuable customer to MSN and we are glad to give you consistent and effective service. Thank you for using MSN Hotmail.
Sincerely,
Jervin M.
MSN Hotmail Technical Support
END

Thought you might want to know for future reference.

Judy

[Serenitude]

That's good. I was beginning to wonder if they were going to make you buy Vista to access it :lol:

[UFO TOFU]

Forget Hotmail. The spam I used to get was awful. Go with GMAIL, the Google e-mail service. It's free and filters spam beautifully.

[Gillianren]

I'm not going to change my e-mail address unless I have to. I've had the same one since the 90s, and I like that fact.

[Neverfly]

mine since 1999
and YEP you guessed it
its neverfly@hotmail:p

Spam is ZERO- all you have to do is set your security settings under options. all spam is filtered out

[Maksutov]

Forget Hotmail. The spam I used to get was awful. Go with GMAIL, the Google e-mail service. It's free and filters spam beautifully.I second that!

Nice to have 2.8 GB of storage.

[Judy]

Well, if I had it to do over, I would probably go with google mail. But I had hotmail (since c. 1997) years before gmail was around and it seems to be way too much bother to change at this point. Tied in to google's desktop search which searches your hotmail inbox as well, it works for me. I also save my messages as text files to my own hard drive so I'm not dependent on the storage at the mail end. I feel a bit 'down market' with hotmail...but so what.

J.

[Fazor]

Well, I got to work this morning and went to check my e-mail and it's doing the same thing I mentioned in the OP. Just says "page cannot be found" if i try to go to hotmail, log-in to MS Passport, or microsoft live (same thing? i can't keep up). It works fine from home, and I can't even get to the log in screen so it has nothing to do with my account. I've cleared every kind of cache immaginable and rebooted the whole system to no avail. Its a browser problem, somewhere along the line. But eh, why wouldn't it be difficult for a Microsoft browser to communicate with a microsoft webpage? </sarcasm>

So, company rules be-dam-err--darned. I'm doing what I did at home 2 or 3 years ago and installing firefox. Oh, and it's not really *against* company rules to do that, these are our computers. But I still like to avoid installing anything on them. But firefox is just so much better.

[Serenitude]

Have you also cleared cookies, etc..?

Sometimes I have trouble with various links, but the toolbar link usually works, or if not that then clicking on hotmail from the msn page. You can also try the Desktop Mail beta - it's the successor to Outlook Express, and works with Hotmail again, as a desktop app like OE did. You can find it here:

http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionid=6ac2bed2-b5a4-4a0a-a897-e36dd191a9f4

I've tried it, and it works really well. No more hassle with log-in screens, etc...

[Neverfly]

yeah and like this site- most mail servers require that cookies are allowed.

At work- the security may be set differently- Blocking cookies, for higher security.

[Fazor]

Yeah I cleared the cookies when I cleared the cache. I cleared history too. And deleted temporary internet files. Nothing works. Unfortunately I was premature on my "Blame MS" rant, as I can't load the page in firefox either. Leads me to believe it has something to do with the firewall. Oh well. I checked the mail on my mobile instead. Could barely read the text because of the formatting, but could get enough to know that the guitar that was on backorder has now shipped and I should be getting it next week. So that works.

[Neverfly]

Yeah that is something few people actually realize.
When you go online MOST of ther WORK is done by the PC that you are using to surf the web on.
So i hear people complain about Yahoo or MSN and such- When the actual issue is caused by their own PC.

Um Deleting cookis isnt enough- you can check by goint to Tools at the top of the browser. Then go Internet Options- Click the Privacy tab. Then click the Sites buttun. Scroll through the list of Blocked sites and see if ANY MSN or Hotmail DNS' are listed.


Another possible cause is a discrepency in the PC registry(incidently MS admitted their fault in this) its an easy fix but i dont feel like typing it all out or risking someone doing it wrong- I can send a patch.

[Stregone]

You can probably setup hotmail to forward all your email to your gmail account if you want. I have a <firstname>.<lastname>@gmail.com addy that forwards everything to my main gmail account. I give that one to family and teachers and whatnot.

[Careless]

mine since 1999
and YEP you guessed it
its neverfly@hotmail:p

Spam is ZERO- all you have to do is set your security settings under options. all spam is filtered out

The only hotmail security setting that works is to prevent emails from people who aren't on a list you've created. Far too much trouble to be worth it. The spam on other levels is horrible, and it's about 50 times (this is an honest estimate) as likely to mark legitimate emails as spam than spam. Worst email service on the internet.

[Neverfly]

The only hotmail security setting that works is to prevent emails from people who aren't on a list you've created. Far too much trouble to be worth it. The spam on other levels is horrible, and it's about 50 times (this is an honest estimate) as likely to mark legitimate emails as spam than spam. Worst email service on the internet.

you are probably right. i created that list.....

[Gillianren]

I have my filter set to exclusive. I glance at the bulk mail folder when I check my e-mail, and that's enough to weed out the ones that are actually from people I know, provided they're willing to make some reference in the sig line so I can add them to my list.

[Serenitude]

You can probably setup hotmail to forward all your email to your gmail account if you want. I have a <firstname>.<lastname>@gmail.com addy that forwards everything to my main gmail account. I give that one to family and teachers and whatnot.

Unfortunately, you can't. At least not with free accounts. And I'm 99.9% sure that even a $20 Plus account won't let you forward ;)