Microsoft Acknowledges Additional Windows Live ID, Messenger, Hotmail Outage

Earlier this week, namely on February 26, the Windows Live online suite of products and services was hit with an outage generated by an undisclosed issue with the Windows Live ID sign in process. According to initial reports from the company, the worldwide outage directly impacted the users that were not already signed in their Windows Live accounts. Access to a variety of services and products under the Windows Live brand umbrella, from Messenger to SkyDrive and Hotmail, was essentially cut off for almost the entire day of February 26. Without bothering to disclose the source of the outage, Microsoft only specified that Windows Server 2008, the server operating system at the basis of the Windows Live infrastructure, was not to blame, and that the issue had been resolved.

This was not the case. Windows Live users continued to have difficulty accessing their accounts for various services. Microsoft acknowledged the new problems after claiming that the initial outage had been dealt with and that it was a thing of the past. Samantha McManus, Windows Live product manager, revealed that two different network problems (both of which remained unspecified) were responsible for keeping users out of their Windows Live accounts. Still, McManus downplayed the issue stating that only "some customers worldwide" experienced problems while attempting to log in to Windows Live online services and just for "a few hours." McManus added that the second outage, that stretched all the way until February 28, "specifically impacted a small set of customers’ access to Windows Live Hotmail."

"We've been busy working to restore our services after the recent downtime, and by our estimates, nearly all customers are once again able to sign in with their Live ID and access services like Hotmail and Messenger. There is a very small group of customers who are still unable to login, but we're hoping to restore that final bit of service Thursday afternoon (today February 28), PST. If you are a member of this group, once you log in, you will see a message from us 'Hotmail Customer Support' with some specific information about your experience and instructions if you need more assistance. No service provider likes their service to be down, and we do everything possible to avoid it and then mitigate when it happens. I am especially grateful for your patience and good humor during these times," revealed a member of the Microsoft Email Support team.

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