Why so many "Service Temporarily Unavailable" errors here?

[Grandpa Mark]

I'm accessing these groups thru the MS web interface at
http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...e1f-4961-419d-9ec7-899d6e6086cd&lang=en&cr=US
....and as I'm trying to navigate the web pages to previous discussions, I'm
getting a whole lot of "Service Temporarily Unavailable" web page errors.

Is this a problem with firewall-type iissues, or is there something up with
MS's web interface? I never used to get these (and come to think on it a bit
more, I think I've been getting these errors from home too, so that should
rule out any local corporate firewall issues.)

 

[Gary''s Student]

The problem is on the server side, not us clients.

 

[JLGWhiz]

I think it is a web issue. I finally hooked up through Outlook Express
because of it.

 

[FSt1]

hi
it's microsoft. again!
i have been using this interface since 2004 and have never had any problems
but since november~ of last year, all of a sudden there just seems to be one
problem after another. i tried switching to google groups but it's screwed up
to. shows the replies to posts but not the original post. great. you have the
solution but don't know what the probem was.
i have contacted microsoft about this throught this site..
https://support.microsoft.com/contactus/emailcontact.aspx?scid=sw;en;1208&ws=mscom
no reply yet. maybe that is screwed up too. maybe you may want to try it and
lodge a complaint.
and microsoft is on TV advertising how they can solve the worlds problems
but can't seem to fix their own web interface.

sigh.
FSt1

 

[ker_01]

I get the same, as well as frequent search errors (it can't find posts that
I'm staring at in the list of posts on page 1). In addition, the user
interface is poorly designed (I've been unable to sort results by date,
unable to cross-post, etc.). Unfortunately, unlike JLG, I am unable to use
NNTP (corporate firewall) so I'm stuck with this interface. If you are able,
I definitely suggest Outlook Express or even a 3rd party like XNews to read
these groups.

I submitted my 'suggestions' to MS yesterday via the "contact us" link (I
had to go to the main MS link because the one at the bottom of the newsgroup
page returned a dead link for me). I have no idea whether this web interface
is being updated or improved based on usability factors, but I can hope...

Keith

 

[JoeU2004]

i tried switching to google groups but it's screwed up
to. shows the replies to posts but not the original post.

And sometimes not the replies. I don't think the problem is with Google
Groups per se. I think the problem is with the MS browser interface. Posts
to the MS news server using OE seem to get to the Google Groups news server
just fine. Of course, I cannot say that with impunity. There could random
variables to consider; and arguably, Google Groups could be filtering based
on various network path fields, which I'm not in a position to spoof. But
considering how screwed up the MS browser interface is, there seems to be a
higher probability that it's the culprit.

This has been going on for years. But it seemed more intermittent in the
past.

Be that as it may, we're stuck with it. So I'm now using OE to access the
MS news server directly.

 

[FSt1]

hi
i know it's not google. google is getting it's info streight from microsoft.
that was the point i was trying to make...a bit poorly perhaps. but like i
said....
it's microsoft. again!

sigh.
FSt1