THE SERVICE IS UNAVAILABLE

Oh dear. Was that an example of pressing button B for a formulaic reply...

I've been affected with Service Unavailable for at least the last 6 hours. That's not a particularly 'temporary error' in my book. I have jumped through the hoops as instructed at https://status.live.com (and yes i did log in) only to be told that there is no problem. Yet clearly, from this thread and all those others reporting similar problems today, something IS still very wrong.

And like r3dh3d I've been using Outlook for some time now, same browsers as ever, and with generally little problem. This problem is Something Else.

Hello everyone,

We apologize for the inconvenience this matter may have caused you.

 

As of yesterday we received an update that the recent server outage has been resolved. It appears that this is another temporary error that needs further investigation.

 

As our initial troubleshooting, we'd like you to check the status of the service at https://status.live.com. Please make sure you sign in on the website to check the status of your server.

 

We also recommend you to follow the steps on the discussion thread mentioned below that carries additional troubleshooting steps to help you get access to your account.

 

I cannot sign into my account. What can I do to solve this issue?

 

If you're still unable to access your account, we would like to know your affected email account and approximate start time of the incident.

 

Note: Any email address that you share in your post will be visible only to representatives of Microsoft and yourself. Email addresses will be removed from everyone else's view.

Thank you.

This is missing the point.  Completely.  

The issue is that Microsoft have told a bunch of Hotmail users that they can't put off switching to Outlook any longer.  The result is that they are moving over in droves over the last few days and the kit isn't coping.  All of these look like timeout problems.  I'm sure there's some scary great MS server farm somewhere with a gazillion little boxes and a whole bunch of cunning load-balancing stuff that's supposed to make who signs on via what front end irrelevant.  And maybe because of that you are being told by the geeks that there is no problem, or the users are just stupid, or it must be that Outlook needs certain browser levels or whatever.  But it's nonsense.  People who have been cheerfully using Outlook.com since (literally in my case) day one with the same browser with no problems at all are suddenly unable to sign in.  So the only thing that has changed is how much traffic you are putting across your servers.

I am having the same/similar problem which started yesterday (24th). First I couldn't get MSN UK then today no email (Outlook version of hotmail). Now I am getting both erratically! They are very slow to load and impossibly slow to use. Even the spell check is taking over a minute to complete its task.

I have only sent one email from my laptop today and Outlook shows that it is creating a draft as you write. When I sent the mail it then printed the draft and the full email. I don't know if the recipient got both. When I use my iPod there are no problems with the email and when I use my laptop I have no problems with anything other than MSN and Outlook.

Any suggestions from MSN????????