Microsoft has advised Hotmail users struggling to access their email accounts to surf via Google's Chrome browser in order to successfully connect to the recently overhauled service.The software vendor finally rolled out its latest version of Hotmail to its 350 million users last week, but since then the company has faced plenty of complaints from disgruntled customers unhappy with the new interface.
Many have griped that emails have disappeared and that scripting errors in Hotmail prevent them from composing new messages.
Others cannot access their accounts at all, and the grumbles are continuing to mount up in the Hotmail forums.
Some users are furious at Microsoft for rolling out a buggy product without fully testing it first.
Microsoft, via the Hotmail forum, has been advising its customers to stop using Safari 3 and Firefox 2 in order to access its free webmail service.
The new Hotmail supports -- unsurprisingly -- various flavours of its own Internet Explorer browser, Firefox 3, Safari 4 and the stable version of Chrome on Windows.
Redmond said last week that its product group was looking into complaints from users, who were struggling to view messages. At the time it asked those affected by the Hotmail glitches to tell the firm what type of internet connection and ISP they were using.
In the meantime it recommended an interesting workaround: "Some customers have indicated that if they use Google Chrome to view their Hotmail account they no longer encounter this problem," said Microsoft.