Review of Windows Live Mail & Messenger Support

Review: I recently reinstalled Windows XP SP2. That means I lost all my programs and I would need to reinstall them. It's been several days so there's some urgency to my need to read e-mail.

The first time I downloaded the Windows Live it didn't work. It said I wasn't connected to the Internet when I was installing. That's odd since I just downloaded the installer. But good it had a back-up plan. I was prompted to download a bigger installer file (presumably, one that doesn't need to download more components). Still no go!

This time around I have error 0x80040005. This is where it becomes frustrating already. I search for the error doesn't go to the Messenger support page. What does this mean? NO SEO efforts from Microsoft folks? Instead, I had to jump from forum to forum to find my answer.

If you try to find the actual Messenger help page, you get multiple pages like

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/messenger
http://messenger-support.spaces.live.com/
http://messengersays.spaces.live.com/

Now why in the world would you have three official support sites? There should be one only with all the answers. And here's one more thing. I couldn't even find the search option for the two spaces sites. Should I then manually scroll through all the entries until I find my answers?

So finally I find a page that may (I am not sure if it will work) have the answers. There are 12 steps. That seems to be a hit and miss solution. Otherwise, there would be very specific steps.

Overall, I'm not very happy with the Support. The answers are hard to find and are not accurate enough to be considered good.

Rating: 2/10

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