Problem Accessing Hotmail

nuclearman

A few days ago I purchased a three-computer license for Bitdefender Antivirus Plus on the strength of its reviews by PC Magazine and AV-Comparatives, but so far I've already encountered a couple of vexing problems. When I installed the program on my Windows 7 64-bit workstation, I quickly discovered that it didn't work well with the 64-bit version of the Opera Browser. Each time I went to a new site, several security certificate warnings would pop up, forcing me to okay the certificates before I could access the page. This problem didn't show up with any other browser, so I was able to get around it by opting for Chrome of Firefox when I went online.

Unfortunately, an even bigger problem showed up when I installed Bitdefender on my Windows XP 32-bit laptop in Seattle: I can no longer access my Hotmail account, no matter WHICH browser I use. Instead, the process times out, each and every time I attempt to log in. I've tried adding Hotmail, Login.Live.com, and so on to the antiphishing whitelist as a means of getting around this, but absolutely nothing I've tried has worked. I'm so frustrated I'm seriously considering uninstalling Bitdefender and going with Microsoft Security Essentials on the laptop until I can get back home and use the workstation, since I need access to my Hotmail account and can't really afford to just let the mail pile up for a full month.

Does anyone at Bitdefender or on this forum have a clue as to what could be causing this Hotmail access problem, or how to solve it?

Georgia

Hello,

Welcome to the Bitdefender forums, nuclearman!

Did you try to turn off the SSL scan on your XP computer in Seattle to check if you can access the Hotmail account afterwards? You can do this by going to Settings from the Bitdefender interface > Privacy Settings > Antiphishing tab > switch to off Scan SSL.

As for the Opera browser on the Windows 7 system: Opera 15.0 was recently recently, which is based on Chromium (Chrome basic). You shouldn't experience any more problems if you migrate to it.

Thank you for reporting this. Please let me know how are things evolving with your computers.

nuclearman

Here's an update on the situation:

Shortly after posting my original note, I went ahead and uninstalled Bitdefender to see whether that would resolve the problem and enable me to access my Hotmail inbox. Even with Bitdefender removed the problem persisted, so I contacted Microsoft's technical support team to see whether they could figure out what was going wrong. They said they'd investigate.

After a couple of days and a number of e-mail exchanges where I went over all the different things I'd tried, I logged in last Sunday and -- miraculously -- the problem seemed to have been solved! However, my euphoria was short lived: just a few hours later, I was in Hotmail sorting through some of the backlog when the problem suddenly reappeared. This convinced me that it was indeed a Microsoft issue, possibly with one of their servers, since I'd uninstalled Bitdefender, installed Microsoft's own Security Essentials (so I wouldn't be completely without antivirus protection), hadn't fiddled with anything else, and yet saw my access temporarily restored.

Anyway, after a week of e-mails back and forth with the Microsoft people, they finally informed me that they'd resolved the problem with a software fix and had tested accessing my account from their end. Unfortunately, when I tried to access the account I simply got the same damned error messages and couldn't get into my inbox! So ... I contacted my dad back in Kansas, as well as a friend back there, and had them try logging in to my Hotmail account on two different computers. Both of them reported that they were able to get in with NO problems. The only difference between their systems and my laptop up here in Seattle? I'd installed -- and then uninstalled -- Bitdefender.

So ... this seems to be some weird issue with the new version of Bitdefender running on Windows XP SP3, rather than my original assumption that it was a Microsoft server issue. That's why I'm back on the Bitdefender forum checking the thread I started.

And since you suggested turning off the SSL check within the Anti-Phishing module, I went ahead and uninstalled Microsoft Security Essentials, reinstalled Bitdefender, and tested out your suggestion. Result? No improvement: I'm still unable to get into my Microsoft Hotmail inbox.

Hopefully, the support people at Bitdefender can help me figure out a solution to this aggravating problem, since it's starting to look like the only way I'll be able to regain access to Hotmail is to completely wipe the C drive and then reinstall the OS and all my software (minus Bitdefender) -- a VERY time-consuming process.

nuclearman

And just like that, the problem has disappeared again!

So what changed on this end? Well, for one thing, I lost my Comcast internet connection about twenty minutes ago, so I unplugged the modem and then powered it up again, as they suggest doing when you lose a connection. It didn't work the first time, but after the second attempt the connection was restored and I tried switching ALL of the privacy controls to "off," just to see if that would make any difference.

I was stunned when I suddenly found myself able to access Hotmail after doing that -- it just didn't make any sense -- so I tried the opposite (setting everything -- including "Scan SSL" -- to "on") and was still able to log in without any problems.

So I'm at a complete loss to explain what's going on or causing the problems. Could powering up the modem again clear out something that was preventing me -- and me alone -- from being able to access Hotmail? That would certainly explain why my dad could access it from Kansas earlier in the day.

Anyway, I'm just grateful to have it working again, even though I'd feel a lot better if I understood what the cause of the problem was.

Any ideas?

Georgia

Hello,

Glad to notice that everything is back to normal.

Most probably some packages were being lost on the line, so resetting the modem solved the issue.