Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Windows Live and reserved domains

A quick flick through Tav's Flickr page, other than reminding me to get some photos up, pulled a memory with his photo of the St Ambrose Church with regard to Microsoft's Photosynth tool. A quick gander and I thought "Hey I've got some sequences that might work well with that" so I downloaded the tool and that's where the fun began.
Turns out that to use the software you have to be signed in to a Windows Live account, which I don't have. So I visited the sign-up page and tapped in the details, hit Confirm and back popped the message that everything after the @ symbol in my email address was part of a "reserved domain".

No explanation as to what the hell one of those was and doubly weird as I'd signed DaBoss up for one only last week for various reasons. At least there's the help page to look at... with no information about this error whatsoever.

A Google search shows others with exactly the same problem and here's the non-answer

I would like to inform you that a reserved domain is managed by a company that controls the registration of all e-mail addresses within that domain. To use an e-mail address that is part of the reserved domain, you would have to register first with the company that manages it.
WTF does that mean? I've signed up with Google with no problem, I've signed up with Skype, but I can't use Windows Live. So I decided to ask them and that's when it gets even more fun.

Using their contact form the first thing it asks for is my name, no problem; then an email address to respond to, no problem; then the email or member ID associated with the account I want to discuss, ah.

That's difficult as my problem is that I can't sign up for an account and oh look it's a mandatory field. So I used my email address again. The message I typed was roughly this:
I can't sign up to Windows Live using the email address as above, it calls it a "reserved domain" what the heck is this rubbish?

As an aside as my problem is in creating an account what am I supposed to fill in for my member ID the mandatory field that I can't use?

As with everyone else who's had cause to contact MS about this I expect either a reply that doesn't answer my question or one that advises me to sign up to a hotmail account.

2 comments:

Tav said...

If you are really stuck I can create a WFA email for you like. No charge, just don't spam.

Creating a Photosynth is quite fun, but a long learning curve. My St. Ambrose Church was my first, Brinton Drinking Fountain was my second. I want to do the inside of St. Ambrose Church or the Polish Church once I get permission to do so.

The Tontine would be a good subject, because you can walk completely around it.

FlipC said...

Much obliged and as if I would :-P

If pushed I can create a Google email account as I'm already an account holder or borrow my father's as he uses gmail, but first I'd like to find out exactly why I can't use my normal email address.

Honestly what a pain just to use Photosynth.

Yes the Tontine would be good, I was going to start with some of Stourport High Street shots as they're fairly continuous ya know a 'this is Stourport' that you can scroll along that is assuming I can get an account.