hotmail is leaving me out in the cold

July 25, 2005 9:25 AM

When I try to log into hotmail, I get this error: "The operation timed out when attempting to contact..." This has been going on for a week. Yet my husband can get into his hotmail account just fine. I've tried logging in using Firefox and IE, but I get the error in both browsers. I've tried on my desktop and my laptop. Neither works. My husband can get into his hotmail using any browser and any PC. What gives? Does hotmail have a vendetta against me?
posted by Evangeline to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Have you tried clearing your cookies?
posted by Daddio at 9:54 AM on July 25, 2005

Good thought, Daddio, but it didn't work.
posted by Evangeline at 10:00 AM on July 25, 2005

Clearing your cache? Clear SSL state?
posted by yeoz at 10:06 AM on July 25, 2005

How does one clear the SSL state?
posted by Evangeline at 10:09 AM on July 25, 2005

Your hotmail account probably is on a different server than your husband's.
posted by mischief at 10:28 AM on July 25, 2005

Mischief, does that imply that it's microsoft's problem and isn't anything at my end?
posted by Evangeline at 10:44 AM on July 25, 2005

Do you have separate accounts on the PCs? If you have you could try to log into hotmail using your husbands account on the PC to rule to out something that's unique to your local PC account.
posted by Ferrari328 at 11:29 AM on July 25, 2005

Don't worry, it's happening to me as well. I tried to get in through my.msn.com and was redirected to a page saying that the server my account was on is inaccessible.

Too bad it's been going on for several days now.
posted by smcniven at 11:30 AM on July 25, 2005

This is the third (and fourth, including smcniven) report of hotmail misbehaving for certain users that I've heard in the past week. I wrote the first one off to user incompetence, but now it really looks like a problem on Microsoft's side.

Here are a bunch of suggestions, but most of them involve messing around with your PC. If the problem really is with Hotmail, they will be of limited use.
posted by flipper at 12:19 PM on July 25, 2005

Works now.
posted by smcniven at 12:38 PM on July 25, 2005

If you are using Explorer and having Hotmail problems, then the problem most definitely is Microsoft's. ;-P

... on Hotmail's end of things, that is.
posted by mischief at 4:03 PM on July 25, 2005