SERVFAIL on account that has worked fine for years.

Question

SERVFAIL on account that has worked fine for years.

chris sunman 20

Microsoft has hosted my email [Moderator note: personal info removed] for many years. This week it stopped receiving emails. It will still send out emails.

I have a microsoft 365 portal but very rarely login. I have changed nothing, on the run up to the failure. I have now been in and tried setting up forwarding emails in case that helped- but no.

The error message is SERVFAIL. I briefly looked this up but all the possible causes seem to be related to hosting and setup.

Given that the email address has not changed and has been in place with Microsoft exchange for years what has happened? Is this some sort of policy change at Microsoft? Is Microsoft having Issues?

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Answer 1

Anonymous

Hi chris sunman

Please note that our forum is a public platform, and we will modify your question to hide your personal information in the description. Kindly ensure that you hide any personal or organizational information the next time you post an error or other details to protect personal data.

I would like to clarify that the Domains section in the Microsoft Admin Center is primarily used to connect and manage domains, and it is generally not responsible for domain hosting.

That said, since your error message includes SERVFAIL, I would highly recommend checking the domain status in the Admin Center here: https://admin.cloud.microsoft/?#/Domains

May I ask what status you are currently seeing there?

In addition, I would strongly suggest contacting your domain registrar or hosting provider to verify whether there have been any recent changes that could be affecting your domain.

Regarding your question about whether there have been any policy changes or any known issues, I have checked the Service Health dashboard at: https://admin.cloud.microsoft/?#/servicehealth and Microsoft service health status

At this time, there are no indications of any related service issues or changes that would explain this behavior.

I would also like to share that I have not found any official documentation confirming any recent changes related to this scenario so far.

Please note that we are not Microsoft support, and this is a user-to-user support forum. Moderators and contributors, including external Microsoft employees, do not have backend access and cannot directly intervene in Microsoft products or features. Our role is limited to providing technical guidance and best practice recommendations based on reported issues, requests, or ideas.

I hope this provides some additional direction.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Anonymous

2026-06-02T07:55:29.74+00:00

Hi chris sunman
I just wanted to kindly follow up to see if you’ve had a chance to review my previous response.

I would greatly appreciate any updates you may be able to provide.

Thank you again for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.
chris sunman 20 Reputation points

2026-06-06T12:16:49.4566667+00:00

I did some digging using WhoIs. Discovered that the people who I bought my domain from (eclipse.co.uk) have been taken over by Liquid WebSpace LTD who changed the named servers [Moderator note: personal info removed]. without telling me. As I don't even have any sort of account with them I have sent a message and have not got a reply to date. I have bought a new domain name from 123-reg and that is up and running. I want to retrieve my original domain name but it already looks like its going to be a battle.
Anonymous

2026-06-06T14:58:10.6333333+00:00

Please note that Q&A forum is a public platform, and moderators will modify the question to hide personal information in the description. Kindly ensure that you hide any personal or organizational information the next time you post an error or other details to protect personal data.
Hi chris sunman
Thank you for sharing your findings.

I hope you are able to successfully retrieve your domain.

In the meantime, if you feel that my guidance has been helpful or pointed you in the right direction, please consider voting it up. Doing so helps others in the community find useful guidance more easily and keeps the conversation productive for everyone.
chris sunman 20 Reputation points

2026-06-07T11:05:36.4033333+00:00

This was the bit in the reply that worked for me In addition, I would strongly suggest contacting your domain registrar or hosting provider to verify whether there have been any recent changes that could be affecting your domain. I had been convinced the problem was microsoft ...as it has been them so often in the past 5 yrs.