Microsoft's Live Poops Out
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News Brief. Live services, both Office and Windows, are unavailable this morning. |
I got an IM from a source a few minutes ago asking if Hotmail and other Live services were down. Being signed into Windows Live Messenger, I assumed that he was wrong.
Not so. When I tried to sign into Windows Live Hotmail, during the Live ID authentication process I got a blank page with text: "Service Unavailable."
I quickly asked for Microsoft comment over Windows Live Messenger. Of course, if that service wasn't rightly working, I wouldn't get a response. But it came through. Microsoft's statement:
"We are aware that some customers may be experiencing difficulty accessing their Windows Live accounts. 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."
It's not immediately clear how many Live services are affected. But some businesses are definitely impacted by the outage. I couldn't log into Office Live.
My casual testing of services suggests a problem with Windows Live ID. During the attempted Office Live log-ins, the Web browser warned that login.live.com was taking too long to respond.
Comments (17)
Victims of a Server 2008 "update"?
LOL - eatin' their own dog food - LOL
Posted by Jamey | February 26, 2008 12:39 PM
We had several computers in the office who couldn't log in while some who could. Try cleaning your cookies.
Posted by Daniel | February 26, 2008 1:44 PM
Daniel
Cleaning your cookies won't solve the logon problem. You might as well have suggested rebooting.
Posted by Jack | February 26, 2008 1:51 PM
Not cookies. Intermittent (mostly down) problem throughout the country since early this morning. Good to see others confirming it!
Posted by Charlie Anzman | February 26, 2008 2:00 PM
Daniel: If it is a Microsoft server problem then how possibly cleaning your cookies resolve the problem?
Posted by ricky | February 26, 2008 2:02 PM
ricky, jack: It has not been confirmed that it is a server problem: "We are aware that some customers may be experiencing difficulty accessing their Windows Live accounts...". Not being able to log onto a server does not imply that the server is down.
I solved our windows live login problem by cleaning our cookie cache on the slight chance that the cookie format changed, expired, was corrupt, etc.
Sheesh...what a group. lol.
Posted by Daniel | February 26, 2008 2:12 PM
Let's speculate on the problem, most likely causes:
1. The servers running all Microsoft Server software, were infected with a virus, that effectively shut them down.
2. BSOD came up and cashed the servers running Microsoft software so bad that it needed a complete re-install. Or another word for it, unstable Microsoft Operating System software.
3. Someone at Microsoft forgot to pay the power bill.
4. Someone at Microsoft forgot to renew the domain address.
5. Or as we will perhaps learn from Microsoft Press Releases later, it will turn out that it never happened at all, or that it happened to perhaps a very small percentages of users.
Posted by The Hand | February 26, 2008 2:23 PM
More;
Let's speculate on the problem, most likely causes:
6. As Daniel says, someone at Microsoft changed the cookie format, and did not bother to alert the users. After all, being alerted to this, would be just what the users would be expecting. Which is about typical from this dinosaur.
7. The cleaning Lady accidentaly (or on purpose) unplugged the server, so she could vaccum.
8. An auto-update patch of some sort cashed it. But as we know, Microsoft patches are completely bug tested, and never cause any problems.
Posted by The Hand | February 26, 2008 2:37 PM
I (a developer) once worked with a girl (a help desk staffer) who told a customer that if they run netstat it will fix there network problems. Your' suggestion of clearing cookies reminded me of that.
Posted by Jer | February 26, 2008 3:10 PM
I have an MSN account and have login issues all day using IE, but using Firefox I can go to mail.live.com and login to my email account.
Posted by Steve | February 26, 2008 4:00 PM
I had trouble signing in to Live Messenger this morning. Trouble ended around 11am ET.
Posted by Greg | February 26, 2008 4:38 PM
Have not been able to login all morning. Seems to be working now though. I wonder what happened? Think they will tell us?
Posted by Chris | February 26, 2008 5:05 PM
Gmail worked all day :)
Posted by Carlos | February 26, 2008 5:43 PM
Yes, and South Florida had a massive, unprecedented power failure today with its infrastructure. Move on?
Posted by Chris | February 26, 2008 7:20 PM
I got a "Service Unavailable" message after logging on to my Live ID from login.live.com. The log on worked though.
Posted by Phil | February 27, 2008 12:46 AM
Maybe it was Pakistan!
Posted by Randy | February 27, 2008 9:59 AM
Anyone remember this happening a couple years ago? Must be the patch for the last patch broke the 2 year old patch.
Posted by Chuck | February 27, 2008 3:06 PM