Hotmail Service Manager's Blog

Windows Live Hotmail Data Loss Event on 11/3

MSFT Brandon M — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:20:00 GMT

Unfortunately, on November 3^rd, 2009, Hotmail suffered an outage that has affected a fraction of one percent of all of our customers. The affected accounts are working and receiving mail normally now, but email stored, received, or saved in those inboxes prior to November 3^rd has been lost. The Hotmail team worked very hard to try to recover this mail, but in the end we weren't able to do so. While this outage affected only a small number of our customers, we recognize that doesn't change what happened to them individually.

We deeply regret this situation and sincerely apologize.

To help avoid losses like this, Hotmail, like other webmail services, keeps multiple copies of customers' mail stored securely across multiple computer servers. That way, if one server fails, there are back-up copies available on the other servers. Hotmail is designed to recover gracefully from machine failures - even multiple machine failures. Incidents that can lead to data loss are extremely rare. In fact, the specific incident that occurred on November 3rd was the first of its kind in the history of Hotmail. We've carefully reviewed the events that led to the mail loss and have concluded that it was a result of a number of independent and random hardware failures, the sequence of which was such that this situation occurred.

We are working to further understand how to prevent similar incidents in the future, regardless of how rare.

We have sent notifications to those people whose accounts were affected.

If you have any questions that we can help you with, please post them to us at our Lost or Deleted Emails Forum.

Sincerely,

The Hotmail Team

Redirected to Bing when trying to navigate to Windows Live Hotmail

MSFT Brandon M — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:08:00 GMT

This solution article will give you information about the problem few customers are encountering with Hotmail site redirecting to the Bing search results page.

Symptoms:

Customers may encounter an issue that when they attempt to navigate to http://www.hotmail.com or http://mail.live.com they are instead directed to a Bing search results page for Windows Live Hotmail.

What does this mean?

We are currently investigating what is causing this issue, but this appears to be a networking related issue between Windows Live Hotmail and your computer.

What should you do?

For most users, this is a temporary situation that resolves itself on your own. We could use your help to help permanently resolve this issue, if you're willing to provide some information about your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and by taking a network trace.

If you're currently experiencing the issue described above, follow the below steps to install a network tracing program called Wireshark:

1. Go to http://www.wireshark.org/download.html

2. Click on "Windows Installer"

3. Click "Run" - (confirm any download prompts that occur here) this will download and install Wireshark and WinPCap. Once the installer starts, click "Next"

5. Click "I Agree"

6. Click "Next"

7. Click "Next"

8. Click "Next"

9. Click "Install"

10. Click "Next"

11. Click "Next"

12. Click "I Agree"

13. Click "Finish"

14. Click "Next"

15. Check "Run Wireshark 1.2.2"

16. Click "Finish"

17. Wireshark will now start - to start capturing go to: Capture -> Options

18. Click "Start"

19. Attempt to go to www.hotmail.com or mail.live.com in your web browser

20. After it loads the page, or fails, go back Wireshark and go to: Capture -> Stop

21. Save the File by going to File -> Save

22. Name the file and put it in a location you'll be able to find again, and click Save

Once you've completed the network trace, post here on our community thread so one of our moderators can let you know how to send us the trace file. Any additional details you can provide (your ISP, how long this has been occurring, what general area you live in) will help us in fixing this issue.

What to do if you can't sign into Windows Live Hotmail

MSFT Roopa S — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:46:00 GMT

This solution article will give you information about different errors that a customer might encounter during Windows Live Hotmail server maintenance or a temporary problem with the Hotmail server.

Symptoms:
Customer may encounter one of these error messages:
- "Sign-in Error. Windows Live Hotmail was not able to sign in to your account at this time. Please try again later"
- “We're doing some maintenance to improve the service. We apologize for getting in your way. Please try again in a few minutes. If it's been more than an hour, tell us you're still waiting.”
- "Due to an internal error your request cannot be processed. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again later."
- "Server too busy"
- "Account temporarily unavailable: We apologize, but your account is temporarily unavailable."

What does the error mean?
The server that hosts your account is currently undergoing a planned maintenance or experiencing a temporary problem. Please click here to know if there is any existing post about a known issue with one of the Windows Live Hotmail servers. To determine which server you are on, click here.

What should you do?
Since this is only a temporary situation, there isn’t any action required on your part. You can try to sign into your account in a short time. Even if you have been seeing this error for more than 1 hr, it doesn’t normally last for more than 4 hours. If you cannot sign into your account for longer than 4 hours, please post your issue along with your account name in the Accounts and Passwords forum by clicking here.

You could try optimizing your browser to ensure that your browser is not causing the problem.

If you would like to provide feedback to us about this maintenance, please click here.

How to determine which server you are on??

MSFT Roopa S — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:53:00 GMT

This solution article will help you find the server that your account resides on Windows Live Hotmail.

How does this help?

During a server problem or planned maintenance, we will be updating our blogs mentioning the server name that is currently under maintenance or experiencing temporary problem.

How to know which server you are on?

Windows Live Hotmail hosts numerous servers and user accounts are spread across different servers.

Updated on 03/23/09:

The new method for getting server info that hosts your account is explained below.

If you are able to login and are not encountering any login error, please follow these steps to know the server that hosts your account:

1. Log into account

2. Hover over the "Inbox" button

3. In the bottom of the browser in the status bar it'll show the server URL that we're familiar with:

Exampe: http://bl113w.blu113.mail.live.com/mail/Inbox...

In this example. blu113 is the server name.

Note: If you do not see a server name in the status bar when you hover over the inbox or any other folder, please point your mouse pointer to any of the optons under "Related Places" in the bottom left hand corner.

If you can't login to the account and encounter an error message because the server is down:

1. Click on this link: http://mail.live.com/mail/browsersupport.aspx

2. Input your hotmail crednetials if it prompts you to

3. You'll be taken to a default error page - hover over the "countinue to Windows Live Hotmail" link

4. In the bottom of the browser in the status bar it'll show the server URL that we're familiar with:

Exampe: http://bl113w.blu113.mail.live.com/mail/default.aspx

In this example. blu113 is the server name.