It now appears that all of Microsoft’s services have apparently been restored. Ad hoc testing of Outlook.com, OneDrive, Skype, and other Microsoft services show that it’s now possible to log in as usual and access all services, and other sites are reporting the same. Xbox Live support now also reports all systems are functioning.
The issues seemed to be either very slow access to services or the inability to log back into services that need to be recovered. Affected services also included the Windows Store.
While the cloud and integrated cloud services can be great things in terms of linking systems and data, they do have one major weakness — they represent a single point of failure. That’s particularly true for services that use a single login to access multiple services.
If you were having issues logging into a Microsoft service Tuesday, there wasn’t anything wrong with your PC, nor was there anything you could do to regain access to your Microsoft accounts. Rather, it’s looking like Microsoft itself is what was holding you back, as The Verge reports.
One example of the problem occurred when trying to add a OneDrive account to Windows 10 to enable syncing. Attempts to do so returned an error saying the account could not be accessed. Microsoft Xbox Live support had this to say:
“Our engineers and developers are actively continuing to work to resolve the issue causing some members to have problems finding previously purchased content or purchasing new content. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience.”
While this notice specifically applies to Xbox Live, the symptoms occurred on some of Microsoft’s other services as well. As you can see from the screenshot below, trying to update apps in the Windows Store on a system that was already fully authorized returned an error about a missing Internet connection. Those who wanted to be notified when the services were again available, were directed to go to the Xbox Live support page and click on the green “Notify me” button.
Updated on 3-21-2017 by Mark Coppock: Added update that all Microsoft services appear to be functioning again.
