Has been on the blink for most of the day here in Finland.

only the best university in the world! yoooooooooooouweeeeeeeeeeee!

Who the fuck is stupid enough to use hotfail??

Hackers I tell ya, stealing all our personal information, browsing our mails about pron and meds!

Oh no, a Microsoft product crashed! I'm so surprised!

Is anyone really surprised?

Well, the /proximate/ cause would appear be that their http daemon is crashed, since port 80 isn't even open...

mail.live.com

Im sure its just a coincidence that its so close to win2008 launch date - couldnt possibly be related to them trying to migrate some servers to win2008 im sure....

@Sam

Hotmail was originally running on BSD and Unix platforms and was *the* free non-ISP email account to have. I don't know if MS ever got it all running on Windows.

I've been using Hotmail since before Microsoft purchased it. I slowly weened myself off of it after that. Tried Yahoo!'s free webmail but didn't like it much.

Once GMail came along (and I wrangled an invite), I jumped from Hotmail completely. I keep the Hotmail account so I have a Live ID for some Microsoft website functions that require it.

* Paris Hilton icon because she really likes Hot Males (I could not avoid such a juicy pun, sorry).

Obviously people are now recreating the same conditions as 2 days ago to bring down any website they wish since apparently it's so easy.

a mighty offer was made, and the bottomless wallet opened,

and Hotmail was swallowed up by the Redmond whale,

and the FreeBSD Daemon was banished forthwith,

and Windows 2000 flowered in its place,

and BillG looked upon his work,

and saw that it was good.

...

and so it was,

slower and flakier and less usable,

until the service went down (yet again),

and the sun became as black as sack cloth,

and the moon became as blood,

and the seas boiled,

and the skies fell:

Server 2008 OCP Release Hotmail Migration Pilot Day.

It's back in the North West UK area, hotmail and messenger just got in after several hours.

Wow! I just notified everyone on my list to start using my Yahoo or personal mail server account. Just in time, too.

MSN® Hotmail® Appears® to® be® down® still® at® 20:06® GMT®. All® I® am® getting® is® page® not® found® after® I® attempt® login®.

Permission to use all Registered Trademarks of Microsoft pending®.

Windows Live Mail/Hotmail is not working in New Zealand this morning either.

They also released documentation on a whole bunch of products the other day. Perhaps some enterprising hacker found a hole into Hotmail?

http://computers452.blogspot.com/

Has been sucking a big fat one all day hotmail wise. I've actually had to get some proper work done. It's not just Virgin Media being crap for once.

...seems to be affecting messenger.

MS was warned not to provide email access to the system between 5pm and 7am because coalition troops can use the email system to track insurgent plans and whereabouts.

Paris, because why the phuq not?

Lossless compression of the data stream, by removal of the dross.

They've got other problems today too - the site certifcates have expired for parts of microsoft.com (see https://mcp.microsoft.com/mcp/ for example). How embarrassing...

I suppose the have used the last letter in the alphabet for mapping the drives, and now they need Yahoo very fast.

I bet someone was emailing anti Islamic material..... ;-)

Erm, if you're trying to fix the problem probably the first thing you'd do is kill the webserver (port 80) while your doing it. Much as I don't trust windoze webservers I doubt the webservers of several hundred hotmail servers all croaked simultaneously.

Roger Heathcote

Thank you for this article... especially quoting the guy who said hasnt the rest of the world noticed this... It has been over 4 hours since I first noticed the problem and MSN doesnt even have a notice about this on their site. You'd think they'd be the first with the scoop!!!

(For not hotmail users, MSn is one way you can access hotmail.) And dont even get me started that thee is no real outlet for info at MSN, or Microsoft. Any help or technical support is replied to "within 24 hours" via email!

uk hotmail is down

hotmail.com is up

The microsoft bashing is rediculous. This article only touches the surface. Yes, Hotmail was down, but so was a crapload of other stuff. Here in the Seattle area there was an outage from one of the major service providers. Knowing a little about the network infrastructure in the area helps too. Seattle is pretty much the northwest hub for the US. So even if there are servers in Tuckwilla, south of Seattle, they still go through the major COs in downtown for their worldwide connectivity.

And NO, I don't work for MS.

paris, because she is clueless too.

So there's now no compelling reason to still be using HoTMaiL.

On top of that it's shite, right?

Go to https://www.gmail.com

What about trying http://165.193.120.166

I was getting "server error" or "wrong username/password" when trying to log in with aMSN earlier. Logged in after four goes and got kicked off ten minutes later. Seems OK now.

I hear your call, but don't get the message.

"University of Cardiff and University of West of England, Bristol are affected to my knowledge". I wouldn't want my kids to get their education there; shark-infested waters? Google offers a great, free, hosting of e-mail accounts for the academia, btw.

I wondered why the kids sat watching TV with us this evening !