For the past few days, Microsoft's Windows Live support forums have been lit up by complaints of frustrated users who recently encountered emptied email inboxes, sent, and deleted folders upon accessing their Hotmail accounts.

Microsoft on Sunday admitted many of its Hotmail accounts had been inexplicably wiped clean, and many experts speculated that the accounts were unlikely to be repair.

Microsoft has since announced that the majority of email accounts have been restored to normal working order, but user complaints continue to be filed online forums. (Source: eweek.com)

Contacts Spammed Even as List is Wiped

In some cases, the problem appears to have gone deeper than just vacated folders. One user complained that not only was her sent box wiped, but her contacts had all received spam advertisements for free iPods. (Source: toptechnews.com)

Server Load Balancing Blamed

According to eWeek, Microsoft claims the Hotmail outage affected roughly 17,355 users and that the issue was due to a load balancing problem between email servers.

"Beginning on December 30th we had an issue with Windows Live Hotmail that impacted 17,355 accounts," said Chris Jones, vice president of Windows Live engineering. Jones insists that the majority of emails have been restored as of January 2nd, and that the company was "very sorry for the inconvenience." (Source: eweek.com)

Microsoft encourages anyone still encountering problems with their hotmail account to request help via windowslivehelp.com.