Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down

Subject: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 05:03 PM

Sunday October 24, 2004:

After an hour or two of connect failures with MSN email, a call to MSN Tech support elicited the info that MSN and Hotmail email servers are down, apparently over a large area. Resumption of service is not expected until sometime tomorrow (Monday) afternoon.

If you aren't getting through, it's most likely their problem - not something on your own machine.

No reason for the outage given by MSN, but a DoS or Virus attack would be the logical suspect - unless someone's heard of a hurricane or earthquake my local news hasn't reported.

Voice phone lines are also affected (possibly by all the people trying to call to see what's wrong.) It took me 11 tries to "make" a connection on voice phone. The symptom I found on the email is an error message saying "the server disconnected disconnected unexpectedly," - "probably due to a time-out" - although it "times out" in under 3 seconds. The first 10 calls on voice were similar - as soon as they said "please hold" the line disconnected.

It was not indicated whether it's "global" or just the server for my area, but "my area" is a pretty wide one.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 05:14 PM

No problem here in Hawaii, John. I was able to get my junk mail on Hotmail just fine. So it's not global, anyway.

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: GUEST,Peter from Essex
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 06:08 PM

No problem accessing from Europe either.

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 06:15 PM

Good to know it's not everywhere. Thanks. It's apparently widespread enough that the tech guy I talked to knew why I was calling before I told him - and before he got my location; but he didn't give any real indication of what locations are involved.

If it's just local, maybe the clones will treat this as an "edited thread" and dump it pretty soon.

John

---

Hotmail.msn.com seems to be working fine for me, John. Generally, we don't delete this kind of thread. We just let it die when it drops off the Forum Menu.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: Janie
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 07:01 PM

I can not access it from the hotmail links on the msn home page, but can access it from my favorites list. Weird.
Janie

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 07:13 PM

I think there are a number of Hotmails. I've noticed that when I go to sign in at one or another of my several Hotmail accounts, the sign-in page and other little details aren't identical. So it may be that only part of their evil empire is under attack.

Hey Janie, that would explain that one problem we were talking about, tho, eh?

~S~

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: Janie
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 10:28 PM

Yep! And meant to mention this in my e-mail to you, but the timer on the oven went off and...I'm sure you know how it goes;-)

Janie

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 03:35 AM

Lin In Kansas informs me that her MSN email is back up - much sooner than they predicted, and my Hotmail SPAM (the only thing I get) came through a little bit ago, so apparently the crisis has been resolved, at least in our server area.

I'll have to watch to see if any of the tech writers report on this, but it'll likely be a week before the next round of enews comes out.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: Folkie
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 09:21 AM

I've had no problems with Hotmail in England but when I was in Australia recently it was impossible to get past the first page, so I knew there were emails for me and couldn't open them!

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: Scooby Doo
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 09:34 AM

I had problems here in SOuth Wales,UK.yesterday evening with trying to sign on AND excess messenger

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: Joe Offer
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 07:34 PM

I haven't been able to access the hotmail.com Website for two days. Anybody know a back door that will work?
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 09:47 PM

My normal OE connection got me one piece of SPAM in the bulk mail box, which may indicate that the server they put me on at the last of their many "migrations" probably is working, but I got a "cannot connect" trying to go in on a browser connection using the link direct to my email.

I got in to the parent website at http://www.msn.com/ although the page load was extremely slow even for my connection. There's a hotmail link from there that might work, although suspiciously the link was shown in red and eventually a "NEW" tag appeared on it. (I don't go there often enough to know that it's not normal.) I have no idea whether that has any significance or not. If you try to go in that way, you may have to do a login - username and password and all that stuff that's "remembered" with your usual shortcut.

I didn't try to proceed to the hotmail web connection because every time I do a "web-connection-with-login" it messes up everything in my normal OE folders.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 10:27 PM

I have avoided Hotmail for several years, because when MS bought it, I immediately began getting SPAM. When I wanted a webmail addy, I found several other with better reputations.

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: Haruo
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 11:36 PM

Seems to be working, if you call that much junk in my Inbox working.

Haruo
who now definitely prefers Gmail

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 01:34 AM

For several days I wasn't able to log onto my Microsoft Money using my Microsoft Passport logon (for extra security, of course). It seems that Microsoft found a huge security problem that was connected between Hotmail and Passport. I think they shut most of it down for a while. In an attempt to get through the blockage I changed my Passport password then had the odd situation of logging onto the program with the new password and have a remote logon box pop up and tell me it couldn't connect, and trying to log onto the program resident on my computer without connecting to the internet and having it reject the new password, so I had to use the old one and use the program without the online features. Yesterday it finally worked together again and now all aspects of the program are using the same password.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 03:26 AM

My infrequently-used Hotmail account [.co.uk] loaded instantly, full of spam as usual. But my original Hotmail account which had been in force for the past 10 years [.com] has been closed down by Gates henchpersons 'because I hadn't logged in for over a month'. So in the, admittedly unlikely, event that I need these ancient contacts, they're all lost. Thanks, Bill.

Yes, I know you should copy your contacts. I hadn't and this is just a warning that you should if you think you might have long gaps between log-ins.

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 05:14 AM

Although hotmail doesn't like it, you can use Outlook or Outlook Express for your hotmail email, with POP3 protocol, and if you do that your address book is on your own machine where it won't go away in the unlikely [pause to laugh hysterically] possibility that hotmail screws up.

Messages that you receive in the hotmail area in OE (and I assume in Outlook) remain on the server and can disappear, but if you use OE Edit|Move (Right clik, Move to) and put them in the "Local Machine" space, they are saved in folders (.dbx file format with OE) on your machine.

You can then backup messages by copying the entire "email" folder elsewhere. You restore from the backup by "File | Import | messages."

The address book is a .wab file that can be saved by copying the file, or by using File|Export to send the addy book elsewhere for archiving. (If you want to move from OE to Outlook, as an example, you need to export the addy book in .CSV format, which Outlook - and probably other email/browser programs - can import.

The same address book that OE or Outlook uses can be "called up" in any Office program for addressing snail mail or for other forms of correspondence if you choose to use the feature. Of course if you let Outlook/OE automatically add addys to the address book when you open emails, most of the entries won't contain anything but the email address, so you do have to fill in the blanks to make it all usefull for the other applications.

If you use only "browser email" as hotmail prefers there's no known good way to backup either messages or address book locally.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: GUEST,Corie
Date: 07 Aug 07 - 08:25 PM

And they're down again.

If somebody e-mails me while the server's down? Will it go through or can it get lost?

Subject: RE: Tech: MSN And Hotmail email Down
From: Sorcha
Date: 07 Aug 07 - 08:30 PM

MSN isn't down for me, and I didn't click the Hotmail link.