According to Reg readers on both sides of the Atlantic, Microsoft Hotmail and other parts of MSN are on the fritz.

Two readers in the UK and one in the US shot us emails early in the California am, complaining that Steve Ballmer and company have lost control of their servers. "Has the rest of the world world noticed that Hotmail seems to have died today?" asked one Brit.

"Hotmail appears to be down," wrote another. "All the people I've managed to contact are having problems. Either they can't sign in or they can't even access any MSN page. This has been going on for at least 6 hours.

"University of Cardiff and University of West of England, Bristol are affected to my knowledge," this reader continues, "of course there could be more." And there is more. Others report that various parts of MSN, including Hotmail, are down across the US, from New York to LA.

When we emailed Microsoft's PR firm, asking for comment on this massive outage, they said they'd get back to us. Then they asked if we could provide a deadline. We told them we needed an answer about as quickly as the world's MSN users need access to their email.

And this seemed to work. "We are aware that some customers may be experiencing difficulty accessing their Windows Live accounts," a Microsoft spokesperson soon wrote back. "We’re actively investigating the cause and are working to take the appropriate steps to remedy the situation as rapidly as possible. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and disruption this may be causing our customers."

Source: TheRegister.

Damn, Microsoft and their outages, they have millions of users and this happens, poor .. and yet still, they want to buy Yahoo!

Looks bad on them.

the register is terrible for rumours and news

well, i can't get my ass on wlm and my friend can't get to wlmail

I couldn't get on earlier i only found one solution thats worked so far as i haven't signed off. I got the Host files corruption error and earlier my sister got an IE offline setting error. She recently just signed off and is now getting the same error and my previous solution isn't working. So theres something wrong with the whole of hotmail etc in my opinion as i cant access anything but my emails while im signed in

NILE, I know TheRegister like to stir, but .. the comment by Microsoft has been on a few other sites.

The thing that annoys me is that they never update people on their blog while it happens, Microsoft at the end of teh day .

quote:

---

Originally posted by aNILEator
the register is terrible for rumours and news

---

Windows Live Messenger is now working for me and 3 other contacts from the UK.

So, things are looking bright so far, just hope Microsoft tell us what happened .

quote:

---

Originally posted by Naruto-SR
"We are aware that some customers may be experiencing difficulty accessing their Windows Live accounts," a Microsoft spokesperson soon wrote back. "We’re actively investigating the cause and are working to take the appropriate steps to remedy the situation as rapidly as possible. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and disruption this may be causing our customers."

Source: TheRegister.

---