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"We are aware that some customers may be experiencing difficulty accessing their Windows Live accounts," a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in a statement. "We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience and disruption this may be causing our customers."

The outage apparently affected all services that required a Windows Live account, including Hotmail, the Xbox Live community site and Windows Live Messenger.

The company

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now claims to have resolved the issue though it has not confirmed what caused the problem, or how many users were affected.

"An issue has caused some consumers worldwide to experience difficulty logging in to their Windows Live ID accounts. This issue has since been resolved and normal operations have been restored to all customers. The issue purely impacted the log-in process for customers and largely did not impact customers who were already logged in," says the spokesperson.

"There is no danger of data loss or data compromise. It is important to note that the security and privacy of our customers was at no time compromised as a result of this issue."

The outage follows the official launch of SkyDrive and its 5GB capacity expansion, and comes during a heavy push of Windows Live services as the company tries to claw ground back from Google.