Trying to restore access to a hotmail account

This morning I checked my hard drive format that had been running overnight, and it was only at 17%. So I think the WD Data Lifeguard program didn't fix the drive properly, and it is faulty.

I applied for an RMA for the disk on the Western Digital website, and read quite a bit about how you have to package the drive for sending it back to them (essentially in the same packaging as new drives come in). So I emailed Mauser to ask him if he could get me a box and bag from a hard drive they've used at his work.

After that I cut out some Pogs in Photoshop, since I couldn't do it yesterday, and then updated my Pog website.

Most of the rest of the day I spent adding metadata to and then processing the photos from a walk I went on with McRad a few days ago.

I also tried to help someone out who had their hotmail account blocked, but unfortunately it didn't seem like there was a lot you could do about it. Hotmail said that the number of tries to access the account was too many, and had one option, which was something like 'try again' and another option that was to reset the password.

On the try again (or whatever it was) option, it asked you to put your password in again and complete a CAPTCHA. But on completing this, all you'd get is the same screen telling you that you'd tried to log in too many times.

So we tried the option to reset your password. This then gave you two options - complete some information to reset the password, or have instructions on how to reset the password emailed to you. First we tried the completing information to reset the password, but it had one of those 'Who was your childhood best friend' style questions, and their son had set up the email for him, so they didn't know this (and they couldn't get hold of him on the phone at the time).

So we tried the second option to reset the password, which was to email it. This then gave you an option of having it emailed to yourself (so having it emailed to the account you can't access!) or to an alternate email address. As it happened, they had their hotmail account open on another computer, so we tried emailing the password reset instructions to their own hotmail account.

But then when we tried to check the email on the open hotmail account, it said they'd been logged out. Not that surprising I guess.

So next we tried the alternate email option, but that just said something like 'An email has been sent to your alternate email address' when you chose it. It must have been an alternate email address that was specified when the account was set up, and since they didn't set up the account themselves, that too was useless.

I asked them to try logging in from our house, in case it was just their IP address that was being blocked by hotmail as they'd tried to log in too many times. But it was the same from our house. So we posted a message on the Windows live help forum, which rather strangely requires a Windows live account for you to be able to post.

So you can't get help on not being able to access your account unless you can access your account to be able to login. Stupid! "Luckily" they had accidentally set up an @hotmail.co.uk account (their actual email was an @hotmail.com account), s they did have an account to login and post on the message board. The message board is kind of strange, it seems that Hotmail use a message board format instead of a contact form for any support requests, and they require you to post your email address in your message.

It is generally a bad idea to post your email address on the internet since then spambots will pick it up. But in Hotmail's case, the Hotmail staff remove your email address from the message after they have looked at it. It still seems strange though to require you to post your email address on a public message board, even if it is removed promptly.

After doing this, they decided that actually they need email access quite urgently, and didn't really want to be waiting an indefinite amount of time waiting (and hoping) for a hotmail staff member to unlock their account for them. So they decided to switch to the hotmail.co.uk account they had accidentally set up earlier. But when they tried to log in, this account was now blocked as well.

When we posted the message on the hotmail support board, we had ticked the checkbox to email any replies to their email address (i.e. the hotmail.co.uk email account that they'd set up accidentally). But now Hotmail had blocked that account, they couldn't see any replies. They tried logging in to their original hotmail.com account, but that was still blocked.

So I went back on the hotmail support message boards, and had to trawl through about 12 pages of new threads that had been started in the last half an hour from other people with similar problems until I found the post we'd made. The email address had been removed from the post, so I told them that someone from hotmail was most likely looking into it, and that was why their new hotmail.co.uk account had been blocked as well, while they re-instate the old hotmail.com account. But all they could do now was wait and see if the Hotmail staff do re-instate the old hotmail.com account or not.

I came back home and processed a couple more photos, did a backup, then went to bed.

Food
Breakfast: Blackcurrant Jam Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Curry flavour Chicken Slice with Iceberg Lettuce Sandwich; Cheese Scone with Utterly Bullerly; Banana; Apple; Slice of Chocolate Cake that me and L made the other day; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Toad in the Hole; Mustard; Gravy; Green Beans; Carrots; Potatoes. Pudding was 2x Apple Pies heated in the Oven with Squirty Cream. Coffee.