nigel preston said:
Hey Buddy,
it's only just very recently my hotmail account has stopped working
with OE,
Well, does that mean it was an old "valued" Hotmail account that got
grandfathered in after the November 2004 change that dropped WebDAV
access to *new* free accounts created after that date?
Since you said that you have a freebie account, and because you claim
to still have access to it as of a couple weeks ago, and because
WebDAV access got killed for *new* free Hotmail accounts created after
November 2004, then it certainly seems that you must have a
grandfathered account that existed before November 2004.
Just because it worked for another 3+ years doesn't mean that
Microsoft will continue supporting the grandfathered accounts. I lost
mine when I switched to the Live interface and forgot to switch back
to the Hotmail Classic interface. A month later, Microsoft
discontinued WebDAV access to my Hotmail account after switching to
their Live interface - and the button to switch back disappeared. I
had a second grandfathered account that survived because I switched to
the Live interface but switched back before the button disappeared
that let me switch back.
So if Outlook Express won't connect to your old freebie Hotmail
account, your choices are: (1) Find another e-mail provider that lets
you use a local e-mail client (e.g., Gmail, BlueBottle, Inbox.com,
domains.aol.com, your own ISP's e-mail service, etc.); or, (2) Start
using the Windows Live Mail client to access your free Hotmail account
(they have their own support newsgroup at
microsoft.public.windows.live.mail.desktop). You can sit and complain
about the loss of access, go find another e-mail provider that
includes POP3 access and does *not* force you to use Microsoft's
e-mail clients, or you can use the new Microsoft client to access free
Hotmail accounts.