MSN Messenger outage blamed on 'data center' issue

Microsoft said late Tuesday that it had resolved problems that had caused a significant outage affecting its MSN Messenger service worldwide.

A company representative declined to elaborate on the nature of the problem, or the steps Microsoft took in fixing it. In an earlier statement, the representative said the outage was caused by an "isolated issue that we've located in the data center."

The problem had affected a "significant" number of MSN Messenger users intermittently since Monday afternoon, the representative said.

The latest outage comes days after security monitors discovered the Bropia worm was using MSN Messenger to spread. The Microsoft spokeswoman denied the outage was caused by the worm.

Last October, a glitch crippled many MSN Messenger users around the world. In March of last year, MSN suffered a couple of outages over a weeklong period. Some speculated that one of the blackouts was caused by sign-in problems from its Passport service. Microsoft denied Passport experienced any problems during the down period.

Instant messaging has become one of the most popular services among Internet users, and it's gaining more traction among businesses. Popularized by America Online's AOL Instant Messenger, millions of Internet users now have an IM client loaded on their PC desktop.

While AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo account for most of these users, the three networks remain proprietary. Many consumers have more than one IM client running on their screen to chat with various contacts on different services. All three companies have stated their intention one day to interoperate, but results have yet to be seen.

IM clients

I find it strange how ICQ was not mentioned as an IM client of choice for many people, Just AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN. Although ICQ has been around just as long have they not? or atleast pretty close.
They even were in the top 10 downloads list of Download.com many times back in the day i'm sure.
ICQ was my first IM client before I even knew about any of the rest.

-Tony

[M_Rudas]

Try GAIM

GAIM is a multi-network client for both Windows & Linux. It runs MSN, ICQ/AIM, Yahoo!, Jabber, and more. Open source & FREE. http://GAIM.SF.net

Jabber

Thankfully there is an alternative that is decentralised that
doesn't have these issues. That alternative is Jabber and due to
it's design, it can't have world-wide outages (unless someone
destroyed the Internet). It also eliminates the risk of receiving
any viruses.

Microsoft said late Tuesday that it had resolved problems

If this is the case, then why is it that MSN is still not available today, Thursday Feb. 10. I have been trying to get on MSN to correspond with my clients since 10 am this morning, and am still unable to. At least I have Yahoo and ICQ as a backup.............MSN needs to get their act together

MSN F****** DISGRACE

get msn messenger sorted you useless ***** you lot have nothing better to do so use your time trying to sort out the F****** problem. u keep trying to make pitiful excuses to why normal service has not been resumed but the real reason is non of u can be bothered to get off your fat arses and actually do some F****** work!