Dave's Answer:
This might or might not be easy, depending on whether you have kept your account settings current and accurate. If you have, and if you've set an account question, it'll be pretty straightforward, but if you have no security question and either have no secondary email address or have one that you no longer have access to, you're in trouble. Indeed, some people who get to this point and have not set up the settings properly end up quite literally just losing their accounts. A huge drag, to say the least.
But let's be optimistic and assume that you have things set up properly in your account.
That being the case, when you go to the Hotmail Live home page, instead of trying to log in again, when you see this...
... click on the Can't access your account? link.
Now you'll have some choices, though they all ultimately lead to "reset your password":
For example, you know your account and password, it offers a handy tip about capslock then offers you to...
"reset your password". When in doubt.
Rather than fighting the trend, let's go ahead and click on "reset your password".
If you can survive the always-annoying captcha -- this is "3AtKu6Ss", though it turns out you can also just enter all lowercase and it'll work fine, so "3atku6ss" works too -- click on "Next" and if you don't have a security question set, you'll get two options:
If you do have a security question -- which is good! -- then you'll see three options:
Since you should have that security question set, let's go down that path. I click on "Security Question" and here's what I see:
I set this in advance, a long time ago, and in fact, had to try a few possibilities until I got it right. Enter the wrong answer and here's what you see:
Enter it correctly, however, and you can now specify a new password for the account:
Click on "Next" one last time, once you've specified good passwords, and it'll log you out and give you the chance to log in again:
That's it. If you don't have access to your email or a security question set, you'll have to go to Customer Service, and then it'll want you to specify as much information as possible, including billing credit card numbers, Xbox Live account name, recent message subjects and senders, your home address, etc etc. Then you click "Send" and hope. Good luck!
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About the Author: Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is internationally known as an expert on both business and technology issues. Holder of an MSEd and MBA, author of twenty books and founder of four startups, he also runs a strategic marketing company and consults with firms seeking the best approach to working with weblogs and social networks. Dave is an award-winning speaker and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs. AskDaveTaylor.com http://www.intuitive.com/blog/