I have a hotmail email account. I have zero problems accessing this account from either computer at my offices (two different ISPs). However, whenever I’m at my Snookie’s shop (SO) and playing on HIS computer, about 75% of the time I try and loggin on my hotmail account, I get an error message. “internal error, your request cannot be processed at this time, we regret any inconvience, actually we’re over here laughing our corporate asses off” or something to that effect.
hows’ come?
(computers involved :can log in: super fast Pentium II, super slow 486 both at my offices, snookie’s is a Pentium II on MSN for the ISP, he does not have a hotmail account).
Do you log in on the default or have you tried logging in on the public/shared computer (increased security).
It may be that you are still logged on to the first computer, never logged off, and then when you try to access from the luv muffins computer, it doesn’t work. Try the increased security…
Hotmail is a set of servers. Sometimes some servers can’t access the same accounts as others (they are “partitioned” in the lingo). Note that if you enter “hotmail.com” as the URL you are immediately redirected to a particular server such as:
Note that in general they are of the form lc(digit).law(digit).etc. (And possibly other forms.)
So, on the machines where you can access your account you might be sent to lc3.law6 and on the one where you can’t get to it it might be lc4.law2.
So why does it go to the same one on each machine? Cookies! When you first go to hotmail, it plants a cookie on your machine setting what your default server is. Note: Your bookmark for hotmail is probably set to a server rather than hotmail.com itself.
Works great, except when your default server is screwed up.
Solutions:
Get rid of your hotmail cookies on the PC you’re having the problem with. Try connecting to hotmail directly and see if you get a different server. If it works, set your bookmark to that.
Try server roulette. Enter random digits for servers as given above until one works. Will only be a 1 time fix unless you bookmark the new server.
I have encountered this problem enough that I keep two hotmail bookmarks.
Apparently Microsoft does not consider being unable to access your email unless you are a wizard to be an error worth mentioning. It is in fact a very unrealiable service.
I’ll second that. I tried it once and gave up on it (don’t wanna be part of that ‘passport’ stuff anyway), but I still check the account occasionally. If I can get to it.
Kalashnikov (and ftg) - Your saying that hotmail is unreliable kind of surprises me. I maintain a (backup) e-mail account on hotmail because I travel a lot and it’s easier to access. I’ve NEVER had a problem getting in, even from all around the world.
I do hate getting all the spam mail, but most of that is taken care of in their spam filter. Though I do bring some of that on myself - whenever I sign up for some free service to try it out, I always give them my hotmail address (if I have to give a real address at all!)