can't do chat session with MS support because of "too many password resets today" for live.com account issues

[philb2]

So the other day my friend said we should use Microsoft Teams. Doing the setup, I fell into a rabbit hole with lost passwords, etc. for live.com accounts that haven't been used in years. The TL;DR version is that I want to truly kill off an outlook.com account I set up in 2018 (?) and haven't used since, and I also want to kill off two of my three live.com accounts. I've been going round and round and round some more with various Microsoft web pages, but I can't see to find a page to start a chat session. In my experience, MS people can be helpful on chat sessions.

I'm locked out for the rest of the day because of this annoying "too many password resets today" message.

So Teams may or may not be better than Zoom, as my friend claims, but so far, I can't use it.

So what can I do, besides regret the day I didn't buy a Mackintosh?

 

[GotNoRice]

So what can I do, besides regret the day I didn't buy a Mackintosh?

Regret the day you decided not to use a password manager instead? In the modern internet, complex passwords are vital and trying to remember them without using something like a password manager is a losing battle where you are going to end up repeating this experience over and over again.

Why do you have so many live.com accounts anyway? My one and only Microsoft account is based on the Hotmail.com account I setup back in the 90's.
If you don't use the accounts that you already have, why are you trying so hard to get them back and/or manage them? You could create yet another account.

Either way, Microsoft is hardly the only company that uses passwords. It's not their fault when you forget yours. You also can't blame them for locking things down after too many bad attempts. Countries like China pouring billions into government-sponsored hacking, where every company and every person in the USA is a legitimate target in their eyes, means that the wild-west days of the internet are officially over and security has to be taken seriously.

 

[philb2]

Regret the day you decided not to use a password manager instead? In the modern internet, complex passwords are vital and trying to remember them without using something like a password manager is a losing battle where you are going to end up repeating this experience over and over again.

Why do you have so many live.com accounts anyway? My one and only Microsoft account is based on the Hotmail.com account I setup back in the 90's.
If you don't use the accounts that you already have, why are you trying so hard to get them back and/or manage them? You could create yet another account.

Either way, Microsoft is hardly the only company that uses passwords. It's not their fault when you forget yours. You also can't blame them for locking things down after too many bad attempts. Countries like China pouring billions into government-sponsored hacking, where every company and every person in the USA is a legitimate target in their eyes, means that the wild-west days of the internet are officially over and security has to be taken seriously.

I do use the Premium version of LastPass. However, I had a situation where I had an with issue Lastpass, so I had to start from scratch. And now I periodically back up Lastpass.

I have three live.com accounts because I needed my one personal account and then two different accounts for when I was working as a consultant. As a consultant, at least with this small company, you did all your own IT support. But I got to write off a lot of gear on my taxes.

What I want to do is keep the original, personal use, MS account since that is the one I have registered to Windows for all the systems on my LAN. For Skype, there is no reason now (as opposed to before) to have a separate account. But then isn't now. I'm not saying that my approach was always optimal, but I'm not an IT professional, just an enthusiast who likes to keep up with Windows.

So, do you have any ideas about starting a chat with Microsoft? (I've given up thinking I could get someone from MS on the phone.)

 

[Algrim]

Without answering your question in regard to chatting with Microsoft… Video conferencing, Zoom wins hands-down. For group communications Teams is pretty good. We went from being a Google shop to all Microsoft, so I’ve had about a year of full-on Microsoft integration.

Teams video conferencing on a Mac is abysmal. Each person added to a video chat visibly increases the load on the CPU. When I present using Teams, I can’t use my wife’s 49” monitor without initiating a kernel panic. I bring the laptop into another room where I have access to a 32” monitor though I get CPU spikes for no apparent reason with Teams being the only active application. We typically don’t have more than 24 people attend using Teams and I have to turn off incoming video for it not to become unresponsive. With Zoom, I’ve been in conferences with people well over 300 with no visible CPU spikes throughout the meeting.

On Windows, I hear that Teams doesn’t have these odd CPU spikes but I do note that most people turn off their video just the same.

Good luck contacting Microsoft. Sorry I can’t help there…

 

[B00nie]

We use Gotomeeting and Cisco webex. Both work much better than teams or zoom in my experience. Zoom has had many security scandals and it's owned by the Chinese...

 

[philb2]

We use Gotomeeting and Cisco webex. Both work much better than teams or zoom in my experience. Zoom has had many security scandals and it's owned by the Chinese...

My friend just sent me a Teams invite to install that program, so I did. Now I wish I hadn't. If MS expects that Teams will compete with Zoom (or other conferencing app), they need to drastically simplify the install routine. I had to repeatedly, repeatedly enter my MS ID and password. After I finished the install, the TLR version that I wanted to switch the login ID. Not possible, so I uninstalled (Revo Pro) and then reinstalled.

Now when I did the install, I got a message about doing an update. OK. So I did the update and then got an error message that my browser (Firefox?) was not supported, even though I downloaded the DESKTOP VERSION FOR WINDOWS 10. Yes, I'm shouting a bit. I cancelled the install, and repeated the process of download and install. No joy . So I told my friend that maybe he likes Teams (he uses Edge), but I'm sticking with Skype.

 

[B00nie]

My friend just sent me a Teams invite to install that program, so I did. Now I wish I hadn't. If MS expects that Teams will compete with Zoom (or other conferencing app), they need to drastically simplify the install routine. I had to repeatedly, repeatedly enter my MS ID and password. After I finished the install, the TLR version that I wanted to switch the login ID. Not possible, so I uninstalled (Revo Pro) and then reinstalled.

Now when I did the install, I got a message about doing an update. OK. So I did the update and then got an error message that my browser (Firefox?) was not supported, even though I downloaded the DESKTOP VERSION FOR WINDOWS 10. Yes, I'm shouting a bit. I cancelled the install, and repeated the process of download and install. No joy . So I told my friend that maybe he likes Teams (he uses Edge), but I'm sticking with Skype.

Most of our customers use Teams and the web client works ok, but sometimes we just send a gtm or webex invitation back to them We try to keep our computers Microsoft free.

 

[MrGuvernment]

My friend just sent me a Teams invite to install that program, so I did. Now I wish I hadn't. If MS expects that Teams will compete with Zoom (or other conferencing app), they need to drastically simplify the install routine. I had to repeatedly, repeatedly enter my MS ID and password. After I finished the install, the TLR version that I wanted to switch the login ID. Not possible, so I uninstalled (Revo Pro) and then reinstalled.

Now when I did the install, I got a message about doing an update. OK. So I did the update and then got an error message that my browser (Firefox?) was not supported, even though I downloaded the DESKTOP VERSION FOR WINDOWS 10. Yes, I'm shouting a bit. I cancelled the install, and repeated the process of download and install. No joy . So I told my friend that maybe he likes Teams (he uses Edge), but I'm sticking with Skype.

You can literally choose log out and login again, you were doing something wrong...You can easily switch accounts if you want. Teams is great, no issues with it, and it already is competing with Zoom and WebEx because all those clients they have using M365...are using teams.

 

[philb2]

You can literally choose log out and login again, you were doing something wrong...You can easily switch accounts if you want. Teams is great, no issues with it, and it already is competing with Zoom and WebEx because all those clients they have using M365...are using teams.

My friend uses Office 365, and he is a bit of an MS fanboy. I also like MS, but I'm no fanboy. Yes, I probably did something wrong. But the real issue is that I could not reinstall it for desktop use.