back to article Microsoft cloud TITSUP: Skype, Outlook, Xbox, OneDrive, Hotmail down

Microsoft cloud services have dived offline, taking down Outlook, Hotmail, OneDrive, Skype, and Xbox Live. The problems appear to have started on Tuesday morning Pacific Time, although systems could have started to wobble earlier: basically, people were and still are unable to log into their Microsoft-hosted services. Outlook …

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  1. Geoffrey W

    My msn email accounts don't work on my windows machines, either in client program or web mail, but they do work in my android tablet. Go figure. If you're having email trouble and have a tablet, try that.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      If you're using the official Outlook app, it uses a cloudy back end which is hooked up to the inbox in a different way to provide push. It also has your credentials stored to do this.

      1. BillG
        Go

        The company I work for has many of these services, thankfully we've had no service interruptions today.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Microsoft Host^Hed Services

      There. Fixed it for you.

  2. Chris G

    A little ray of sunshine

    I have just gotten back into my hotmail account here in Spain on my w7 laptop, the odd thing is my account was still open and functioning on my android phone, since outlook/hotmail went cloudy the service has turned to a steaming heap of dung.

    It is slow, over complicated to sign in and the UI has degraded even further, the last time being when hotmail was dumped in favour of the outlook flavour. I keep it going because it is easier than trying to migrate all of my contacts to something else, maybe I should rethink.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A little ray of sunshine

      "went cloudy"

      What do you mean "went cloudy," Sunshine? Hotmail was a giant "cloud service" back in the 1990s, they just didn't think to call it that then. Is O365 a crappy service trying to capture what's left of the Exchange/Outlook market before they figure out that you can do email and scheduling with any app, not just "The Precious?" Of COURSE IT IS! Is Hotmail a garbage dump of an online webmail app that makes people wonder why MS is still propping it up and making it part of their Authentication services under the outlook.com property then shoehorning it into whatever runs the O365 suite? Sure, we all do! Did Hotmail have any outages BEFORE all that happened? You bet. So, what exactly is your problem again? :P

  3. Dazzz

    Welcome to the cloud...

    I wonder if they tried turning it off and on again

    1. Jon Smit

      If that fails

      Clear the cache...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Doesn't help if you've mangled autoexec.bat on the c:\ drive.

      1. Geoffrey W

        If your autoexec.bat and config.sys files are mangled, just run MemMaker to help you straighten them out. I wouldn't be without it. You'll have loads of high and extended memory in no time. Perhaps as much as 1 MB even.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Apparently the One Drive issue is they modified the boot.ini and turned off /fastdetect. hence the time it's taking to come back online.

        2. prindlefly

          Sysedit is also your friend. Don't forget to check your system.ini and win.ini. Don't forget to defrag. Ugh, where is Norton Utilities when you need it?

          1. Alan W. Rateliff, II
            Facepalm

            You tossers have it all wrong: just delete system32. Duh!

          2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

            Ugh, where is Norton Utilities when you need it?

            Over there, crying in the corner after being borged by Symantec..

            1. Geoffrey W

              And where's Peter Norton, the glamorous cover model of Norton Utility boxes with his shirt sleeves rolled up? Bet he isn't crying in the corner. He's in the attic counting all his Symantec money.

  4. Martin Summers Silver badge

    This has been going on a lot longer. Wobbles started happening with Office 365 Outlook around 10:30am GMT and started getting back to normal seemingly around 4pm. Seemed to affect email with attachments first and then email just stopped being delivered completely.

  5. Johnny Canuck

    My boss is down in Jamaica for 2 weeks and just phoned me because he can't get into his Microsoft email. Oddly, he's not able to connect to the hotel's wireless either.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Nah gowan! Don' even worry about it, mon! I'll be down straight away to check on dis and other tings! Tell 'em I'll be dere about 4:20 local time.

    2. Mystic Megabyte
      Joke

      @Johnny Cannuck

      Did she go of her own accord?

  6. PhilBuk
    Thumb Down

    A Bit Up and Down

    Got a quote from an insurer via the hotmail account on my phone. Went to a PC to look at it full size and Outlook 2013 prompted me to login - failed. Went to webmail tried to log in, got a page saying that the page I wa trying to view was not TLS 1.1, 1.2 or 1.3 compatible - Microsoft's own page! Went back to phone to forward email to a non hotmail address and, now, couldn't connect to hotmail.

    Long live the cloud!, and so on.

    Phil.

  7. Digitall
    Facepalm

    Steady as she goes MS

    As if we aren't having enough grief with their OS patching..

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Steady as she goes MS

      how long before the MS login for Win-10-nic stops working?

  8. IGnatius T Foobar
    FAIL

    Microsoft FAIL

    'nuff said :)

  9. Alan Sharkey

    Weird - all mine are working fine - 3 O365 accounts and one Outlook one.

    1. TheVogon

      All working for me too - and OneDrive.

  10. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Nah

    No point going all MS blaming on this one.. It's the principle of the cloudiness that's the problem. Stuff goes wrong. When it's cloudy stuff lots goes wrong.

    1. kain preacher

      Re: Nah

      But, but I thought the cloud was bullet proof. That's what Peo0ple like amazon and MS keep on telling me.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nah

      All true, but, er, Microsoft decided to hitch its wagon to the cloud. So to speak.

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: Nah

        The Cloud is more bullet resilient than bullet proof. In that what would normally kill outright just leaves little holes everywhere. Mind you, if it heart bleeds, we can kill it.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My Hotmail is a bit like the grand old duke of York. When it's up it's up and when it's down it's down.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      And when it's only half way up they forgot to renew the certificates.

    2. P. Lee

      >My Hotmail is a bit like the grand old duke of York. When it's up it's up and when it's down it's down.

      and when its only halfway up?

      That's when Shroedinger is the happiest!

  12. Tom Paine

    Ouchie

    Good luck explaining that "stuff breaks. When cloudy stuff breaks, lots of stuff breaks" to angry wrathful execs if you just persuaded your org to migrate...

    1. Martin Summers Silver badge

      Re: Ouchie

      Then you'll remind them of the revenue cost after it has all died down and they'll be happy again. I for one am grateful that I don't have to mess about supporting exchange server, as I think many people are.

      1. Zippy's Sausage Factory
        Paris Hilton

        Re: Ouchie

        Then you'll remind them of the revenue cost after it has all died down and they'll be happy again. I for one am grateful that I don't have to mess about supporting exchange server, as I think many people are.

        Doesn't work when it means you've just lost a £100K (or more) deal. In that case it's usually "who suggested we start using this rubbish - I want them fired and a proper system installed to replace this malarkey, AND I WANT IT TODAY"

        (Paris Hilton because that's as good an analogy for an IT manager as I can think of...)

    2. lorisarvendu

      Re: Ouchie

      "Good luck explaining that "stuff breaks. When cloudy stuff breaks, lots of stuff breaks" to angry wrathful execs if you just persuaded your org to migrate..."

      Ah but we in IT get angry wrathful execs almost every week when something somewhere breaks. Regardless of whether we have control over it or not (or whether we caused it or not!), each time that we fix it (or it fixes itself), the execs calm down, agree with us that "stuff happens" and go away, telling us we're the best IT Department ever...until the next time. Repeat ad nauseam.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Ouchie

        "telling us we're the best IT Department ever...until the next time. Repeat ad nauseam"

        Got any jobs. A thank you once a decade would be an improvement.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Ouchie

          That only really matters if it's genuinely meant, which if the threats and shouting occur again the next time there's an outage, it's really not any better than being ignored/constantly badgered.

          Anon because, well, take a guess what my relationship with my management is like?

    3. Phil W

      Re: Ouchie

      "if you just persuaded your org to migrate"

      If you did the persuading in a company large enough to have multiple people who could be titled "exec" then you deserve to be taken outside and shot anyway. Either you're in IT and have no idea what you're talking about, or you're not in IT and shouldn't be trying to persuade the execs to make major IT changes anyway.

  13. Alister

    Sorry, my fault...

    Despite my objections, we migrated to Office365 from on-prem Exchange last week.

    It's obvious that Microsoft's infrastructure just can't cope now, we broke it...

    Sorry...

    1. Hans 1
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: Sorry, my fault...

      Despite my objections, we migrated to Office365 from on-prem Exchange last week.

      It's obvious that Microsoft's infrastructure just can't cope now, we broke it...

      Sorry...

      You have to admit, Office 332 is cheap, really cheap ... at some point, when you wanna scale, you need enterprise OS' (so no Windows), then, you need more than under-grads with a Minesweeper MCP .... MS only have to survive until the competition is chapter 11, then they can raise prices 100 fold ... and the IDIOTS are migrating in droves, we migrated months ago ... I told them, The World Won't Listen! At least we keep on premise Exchange, you know, in case; AS THE MS SALES GUY TOLD US ... no downtime for us ... you poor sods!

      What is the bloody point of migrating to Office 332 when we have to keep Exchange in-house in case MS f*cks up ??????????

      As Mr Smith £ family would put it, The World Won't Listen!

    2. Alan W. Rateliff, II
      Happy

      Re: Sorry, my fault...

      And for all that cancer...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP3X0dSV9kI

  14. benderama

    There goes the migration from google I was about to explore...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Don't worry, I'm sure Google will fuck something up, issue a half arsed apology, promise to do better and then fuck something else up.

  15. ashdav

    Oops!

    To quote a phrase I read elsewhere:

    "It's not the Cloud, it's someone else's computer."

    They're not doing very well lately are they.

  16. J.Smith

    How dare they!!!!1

    Typical M$ &%$£&^$. Why do they have to ruin everything, so evil. This proves they really are the devil incarnate, as if proof were needed. I hate &&%£&*^ M$ so much.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How dare they!!!!1

      Forgot your meds?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    So what does this make it now? Office 359?

    MS Office is taking more days off than the French!

    1. Hans 1
      Happy

      Re: So what does this make it now? Office 359?

      So what does this make it now? Office 359?

      No, Office 350, and we're still in March ... February already saw a week of TITSUP ....

  18. Hans 1
    Coffee/keyboard

    Patch Tuesday

    Even MS waits for the Windows users to test patches ... then they realize the 44 reboots per server on patch Tuesdays really has consequences on availability of essentially services ...it's March, they cannot blame certificates this time ...

    Poor sods ...

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