�"No Hotmail for you!" Error messages and problems logging in�
2003-05-23, 08:00:00:

Around work, we had a fairly large rash of people who couldn't log into Hotmail using Internet Explorer, and nothing we could think of would fix it. When they would try to go to Hotmail, they would get a "Cannot find server"/"The page cannot be displayed" error.

Frustrating.

Your first clue should be that it only happens in Internet Explorer. If I really needed to check Hotmail, I could use Mozilla. This meant that it wasn't the network, at least not directly. It had to be some setting in Internet Explorer.

The supposition of some setting was supported by the fact that we have a lot of people who happily use Hotmail all the time. Also, we have a large contingent of users who use MSN and other Passport-based services, so we were baffled because we'd tinkered with it quite a bit to find the offending setting.

The cure, it turned out, was simple:

1. Go to Start > Control Panel > Internet Options > Advanced
2. Uncheck "Show Friendly HTTP Error Messages"
3. Log into Hotmail

Apparently, the functionality that intercepts HTTP error messages in IE and shows you so-called "helpful" information will also stop a redirection chain, which Hotmail uses to log users in. If you turn the misfeature off, you get the expected result.

Another case of a Microsoft misfeature, or their left hand not knowing its right hand is wiping its ass and coming out covered in shit, and then getting it all over itself, too.