Yesterday morning I got a weird screen when trying a couple of times, then on third or fourth try I was able to get in.
I have yahoo.com and mail.com accounts that get little use. Partly because of the problems you encountered, I am weaning off of hotmail. They are not customer-friendly. Was going to use Gmail and created an account, but I'm not crazy about the interface.
Yahoo is in the process of upgrading their email, so I've upgraded and will use the beta. The interface seems good.
This website has an 800 number that reaches MSN support. Since Hotmail is part of MSN (kind of), maybe it can help if you have not resolved yet. 800-386-5550.
Nope. I am planning to do what I should have done long ago...switching to G-Mail. Hotmail wasn't that important to me since my main place for mail is at Comcast. Actually I had only one important message I had to access at Hotmail and I contacted the person via other means.