The downsides of a broken Microsoft ID (and the power of the Store!)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2013/09/20 08:25 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2013/09/20/10450775.aspx


It was a few days ago that I kind of died.

Well not died, but certainly my identity has been kind of seriously wounded.

The first hint of a problem came when my Nokia Lumia 920 had some App updates in the Store. The error that comes back is:

Your user name or password don't seem to be working. Please try to type them in again."

But it fails to recognize the password as being valid.

Microsoft's internal helpdesk does not cover the problem and points to MSN helpdesk at 1 (800) 386-5550.

Calling them points one to Windows support, which it will helpfully transfer you to while pointing out the direct number is 1 (866) 234-6020.

That number, after determining that you need to reset your Live ID (Microsoft ID) will send you to http://account.live.com/password/reset.

I had my ID as v-michka@msn.com with a free account while I was an MVP for Microsoft, using my Microsoft username while I was a vendor, with a backup account of michka@trigeminal.com, which I was recently afraid I was losing due to this came up, which thankfully is being resolved by Luke Chung of FMS, who will take over the domain and host the old content, letting me keep the original email.

About half of the sites think of me as v-michka@msn.com (now aliased as v-michka@outlook.com!) and half of them think it is michka@trigeminal.com, which holds my Microsoft ID quite nicely.

Ironically, all of my problems are with Microsoft sites, programs, and services; I can ignore most of the problem on my computers and my phone by using non-Microsoft products.

This very blog you are reading is being written on my phone by the Incognito browser from casaro, for example! It's a nice little browser and since it is currently saving my ability to blog I don't mind the endorsement!

No one knows why the problems were happening originally, but once again I find myself in awe of the power of the Store on the Windows Phone and Windows 8 (and 8.1!) which literally saved my ability to blog today! It will definitely be a new topic I will be blogging about and working on in the future!


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referenced by

2013/09/23 The power of the Windows Store

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