Hotmail users burned by missing e-mails

Associated Press - Some users of Microsoft Hotmail are starting off the new year scrambling to get back e-mails of old. A chorus of frantic users has posted complaints on Microsoft's online forum that all of their messages have disappeared.

"Please help me get them back," wrote one user under the moniker 'Zacgore' in a post dated Saturday. "All my kids' info and pictures are in there!"

Others complain that the majority of the e-mail in their inboxes was sent to their deleted mail folders instead. It is unclear from the posts how widespread the problem is. The free Web-based e-mail service is the world's most used with about 360 million users globally, according to comScore Inc.

Windows Live support technicians stated in numerous threads that the Hotmail team is aware of the problem and have now posted the fix should be complete:

“We have restored the emails to those who were effected. If you are still missing your emails, please post your issue here (please note that you need to be logged in to the windowslivehelp.com site to be able to post) with as much detailed information as possible (How much wasn’t restored, and any specifics that you may have) We sincerely apologize and thank you for your continued patience.”

The forum topic is now closed and topped with the following statement:

We have identified the source of the issue have restored email access to those who were effected.  We recognize that even though we restored email access, some of the affected users did not receive mail sent to them during the last 24-72 hours.  We are in the process of rectifying that and should be finished by late tonight Pacific time.  

"At this point it appears to be a limited issue, and Microsoft is working with individual users who are impacted. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers," Microsoft spokeswoman Catherine Brooker said in statement Saturday. She declined to disclose what caused the glitch.

Microsoft's forum contains 476 pages of complaints about lost and deleted e-mails that date back to early November.