Windows Live Sync Outage Done, Update Released

At the start of the past week, Microsoft was announcing that on October 22nd it would introduce an update to Windows Live Sync. At that time the Redmond company also informed that, because of the rolling out of the refresh, the Windows Live Sync service would become unavailable to users. In fact, the service would also remain inaccessible, provided that customers visited the Windows Live Sync website and deployed the update offered. At this point in time the Windows Live Sync outage is done, the update has been released, and functionality is back to normal parameters.

“We sincerely apologize for the extended period of downtime [on October 22nd]. We discovered a serious problem in Windows Live Sync that could cause problems in rare cases for people who used Windows Easy Transfer. As a precaution, at 9:15 Pacific Time (UTC-7) [on October 22nd] we decided to stop allowing people to sign in to Sync until we could fix the problem. Early [on October 23nd], we released an update to Sync and began allowing people to sign in again,” explained Eric Doerr, group program manager, Windows Live.

Doerr noted that users of machines running Sync would be prompted to update the program the next time that they used their machine. Microsoft has made the refresh mandatory. In this regard, the software giant will prevent customers without the required update to connect to the service until they install it. According to Doerr, the Windows Easy Transfer issue was identified through internal testing. Microsoft revealed that such problems occurred very rarely, and that the update was critical to ensuring that user data remained safe.

“If your computer was already running Windows 7 before this update, you’ll have to go to the Sync website to add your computer back to all the folders you’re syncing. We know this is a hassle and we apologize for this inconvenience. You’ll also see that your computer shows up on the Sync website with a new name—you can safely go ahead and delete the old computer from the website. Rest assured that your files and folders are safe,” Doerr added.