Microsoft claims Hotmail restored after email glitch

 

Gallery

By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 4 Jan 2011 at 08:26

Microsoft says its Hotmail service is back on track after thousands of customers lost access to accounts for several days.

Subscribers hit by the server management glitch either lost emails from their inboxes or were redirected to deleted mail folders, but Microsoft says the problem has now been resolved and all mail restored.

“Beginning on December 30th we had an issue with Windows Live Hotmail that impacted 17,355 accounts,” said Windows Live executive Chris Jones on the company's Live blog.

“Customers impacted temporarily lost the contents of their mailbox through the course of mailbox load balancing between servers. We identified the root cause and restored mail to the impacted accounts.”

Despite the apology and resumption of services, some users claimed they were still being affected by the problem, complaining about the damage caused by lost emails and Microsoft's "inadequate" response to the problem.

“My inbox of over 8,000 emails from the start of this address over 10 years ago is still gone,” one irate Hotmail account holder using the name westcoastborn posted on the company's site.

“I am devastated by this loss - my life, business and tax info was all in this email I accessed daily. I was given some inadequate responses and then ignored [by] Hotmail support.”

The free service boasts some 360 million users globally.