Hotmail Access

[Ruler2112]

OK guys, this one has me stumped.

At work, my boss has a hotmail account for e-mail. When she tries to access it on her PC, it pops up with a 'Page cannot be loaded' error. This happens apparently at random; sometimes she can get in and other times she can't. She can get to the rest of the internet without any noticable problems via the T1 line.

This isn't all that puzzing to me; I figured that there's simply something wrong with Hotmail at that specific time. (Usually before 11:00 am EST, but happens randomly thoughout the day.) Here's where it starts to get weird.

She can go to another PC in the office and log in successfully. She can go to several other PCs and it will either work or not- again, it seems completely random.

This has me somewhat puzzled, but I figured it was an intermittent problem with hotmail. I felt that this was a bit of a stretch, as it's happened for months. (I was just hired about 3-4 weeks ago though.)

The kicker is this. The general manager's PC has AOL loaded on it. If she tries to access her hotmail account when logged into AOL and using through the AOL browser (still going through the same T1 line), it works fine. Using the standalone version of IE on the same machine results in the random working/not-working symptom exhibited by all the other machines in the office.

The computers range from XP to 98 to NT4, each with differing versions of IE. I've been unable to detect a pattern of any kind. I sent e-mail to MS hotmail tech support, but have received no response and truthfully don't really expect anything. I'm thinking of installing Mozilla on her PC and having her try to access it though that, but don't see where that would make any difference, as it works sometimes.

Anybody have any inspirational ideas???

[watchtower7]

the same thing has been happening to me and pissed me off so bad that I am switching from msn to the hated aol.
Although it has been happening less since I upgraded to msn8 and msn messenger's latest version.

[Ruler2112]

THANK GOD- I'M NOT GOING INSANE!!!!

It happens sometimes to me too (very little actually).
When it happens i go to msn.com or hotmail.co.jp or msn.co.jp and try to login from there, usually it works fine! ... it might be due to a server overload or similar ...

[ben-the-slacker]

You can also use Outlook Express to access Hotmail. Give that a shot.

[custompccases]

I’ve been having the same thing happen lately but its been all over the net the page wont even attempt to load it just immediately flashes to "cant be displayed" takes a refresh and it comes back but its getting annoying.

[cadetstimp]

Time to delete the Hotmail cookies and allow them to be recreated. This usually fixes the problem you're describing.

MS loves to make updates to their website/cookie format without any consideration towards to those who already have cached cookies. They always forget to force cookie expiration when they make changes.

Just delete any @hotmail.com referenced cookies while IE is closed and then retry.

[Ruler2112]

I tried deleting her hotmail cookies today. Worked, then it didn't, then it did, then it didn't. Randomly works and doesn't, depending on it's mood. (Or so it seems.)

A simple reload doesn't help anything; tried reloading the page a dozen times today.

For some reason, I didn't see your reply when I logged in from work KenKun. I'll have her try that tommorrow.

The main reason she wants to use hotmail instead of the corporate-provided account is because the corp account is outlook-only. She travels and needs to be able to access her e-mail from any computer with a 'net connection. I've got a call into the corp e-mail provider to see if they offer a web-based interface or have any plans to in the near future. If not, I can always teach her mail2web.com, although it would be somewhat clunky.

[peterh3244]

i cannot acces hotmail at all on the web! ANY ideas

[Ruler2112]

Use Mozilla. That was the solution with three different people at two different stores. For some reason, IE doesn't like Hotmail. (Which I find to be hilarious.)