Fresh outages affecting Zune and Xbox LIVE services

By Tom Warren, on 21st Sep 11 4:27 pm with 13 Comments

Microsoft issued several service alerts on Wednesday warning of outages across its Xbox LIVE and Zune services.

Xbox LIVE users are currently experiencing issues preventing them from creating new Xbox LIVE accounts, managing their existing account or recovering their account on a different console. The outage also affects users of Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE online services such as Xbox.com and Xbox LIVE forums. Microsoft’s Games for Windows users are also experiencing issues accessing the service.

Zune marketplace users are reporting that they cannot access their account or buy Microsoft Points as a result of the latest outage. Microsoft confirmed the outages for both services and assured customers that the company is working on the problem. “We are aware of the problem and are working to resolve the issue. We apologize for any inconvenience,” said a Microsoft spokesperson.

The latest outages follow a string of problems with Microsoft’s various web services recently. The company revealed on Wednesday that a corrupted DNS configuration on September 8 led to a mass outage of Hotmail, SkyDrive, Office 365 and MSN. The problems prevented a large number of people from accessing their Hotmail email messages for around three hours on September 8.

Xbox LIVE:
Users may experience difficulties with the following services:
Signing into Games for Windows – LIVE on a PC
Accessing the Xbox.com Web site
Posting or viewing entries in the Xbox.com forums
Signing into the Xbox LIVE forums
Signing into Xbox LIVE from Xbox.com
Searching for Web pages that are on Xbox.com

Xbox LIVE Marketplace:
Users may experience difficulties with the following services:
Browsing Indie Games from the Xbox 360 console or Xbox.com
Browsing the Games for Windows – LIVE Marketplace on a PC
Browsing Games Marketplace from the Xbox 360 console or Xbox.com

Xbox Accounts:
Users may experience difficulties with the following services:

Creating new Xbox LIVE accounts, managing those accounts, or recovering an account on a different console
We are aware of the problem and are working to resolve the issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience

Zune issues

  • You might be unable to access the Zune marketplace or manage your account, including buying Microsoft Points and viewing or changing your personal information. We’re working on the problem. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience.
  • You might be unable to manage your account, including buying Microsoft Points and viewing or changing your personal information. We’re working on the problem. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience.
  • Your playlists, most-played songs, and other personal stuff in the Social might be outdated. Please check back soon. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience.
  • http://www.timsmithmma.com Tim Smith

    Zune has been slow as hell for me for days now. Hopefully it was related to all of these problems and starts acting better when this is resolved.

    • http://www.winrumors.com Tom W

      Yes I believe they were experiencing issues yesterday too.

  • http://twitter.com/bnlf Bruno Nunes

    for my luck i went home from work during lunch and tried to play a bit of xbox and couldnt even log :(

  • http://twitter.com/LachlanCMcLeod Lachlan C McLeod

    hopefully this is because of some updates going on in their systems to prepare for the big update coming soon

  • Morgan

    I have experienced some outages on Zune on Xbox360 for about a week now. I have tried to loa up Zune where I end up staring at the spinning circle for about a couple minutes before it times out and sends me back to the main menu. When I do get in, it loads up DJ and I begin listening and have noticed after a couple of songs it will stop. When I look at the screen it is quickly cycling through songs that it apparently cannot play. Sometimes it will do this for several minutes before finally coming to a song it can play. Not sure what is going on here but I hope they get it fixed soon.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3OIDXOI5OEMTX6Z3O5YUBFSISA Diego3336

    My Zune Software isn’t updating my played songs since last Thursday.

    • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/6G3ZZJCHOLYP3S5CRCIHQ7WDSE MVIM

      Mine either. My profile picture in the Zune software has also been missing since then. In fact, it’s still missing as of this moment. What’s going on?

  • http://www.callumpy.co.uk Callumpy

    My xbox is taking a good 5 mins to sign in, and when it does, it just crashes anyways :/

  • GP007

    Unless you want to play online you don’t have to wait for it to login to Xbox Live I don’t think.   I can’t remember but there should be a way to skip the login or cancel it and start playing a game.

    • http://twitter.com/Shadow_024 Shadow 024

      There are people without internet on their systems afterall…

  • http://twitter.com/laserfloyd Lewis McCrary

    I’ll take outages over compromised accounts though. :)

  • Anonymous

    it works fine with me for now…

  • 6mea6culpa6

    been having issues with playback of Zune purchased rentals, all connections are good but when I try to watch Zune movies it times out and usually gives the error code: c00df243. After many patient attempts I can get it going without a hitch usually but patience are running thin these days.