HTTP 400 Bad Request When Trying to Read Email in outlook.live.com

meeshu · 11 Jul 2018

This one is for any experts in using outlook.live.com (ex hotmail.com) website.

As the title says, I am now unable to open/read any emails (inbox, sent, junk etc) in outlook.live.com website!?

On every attempt to read any messages I now get the error "HTTP 400 Bad Request" window appearing with the additional message "The webpage cannot be found". !?

This has just happened recently. Previous night I was able to read emails etc just fine, but the following day I was no longer able to read emails anymore!?

Briefly, the email address WAS hotmail.com but Microsoft changed the address to live.com or outlook.live.com a few years ago. I still login to the email account using my hotmail.com name.

I checked with a local PC repair shop, and they advised that they could open my account and read my mail, so the issue seems to be something to do with my home computer setup. However, I did note that there was a message appearing briefly to the effect that Microsoft had just done something to their system according to user requests when the PC shop technician went to outlook.live.com.

So this change to outlook.live.com might have caused the issues I'm now having with being unable to read emails any longer!?

I am running Windows 7 SP1 32 bit with Internet Explorer 9 as the browser being used for emails. But I am still on a slow dial-up connection. I've found that outlook.live.com is being run under "lite" mode which suits me fine, because the email page usually loads in just a matter of seconds! Otherwise it literally takes more than 10 minutes to load the "full" or "normal" email web pages!

I've cleared browser cache, cookies, and temporary files, and run SFC /scannow (with no issues found). I've also "reset" IE9. But the issue still remains! I am unable to read any emails anymore using IE9.

Note that I CAN log in to my account using another browser (Vivaldi) and I CAN read my emails. However Vivaldi browser loads the FULL or NORMAL email page which literally takes at least 10 minutes to load, which is extremely inconvenient! I can't select "lite" email mode via Vivaldi either.

So I still prefer to use IE9 in "lite" email mode to save time in loading the email pages.

What to do now?

mrjimphelps · 12 Jul 2018

The correct website is "outlook.com". Try that one.

meeshu · 12 Jul 2018

Thanks for the comment.

But I've always typed the URL as being either "http://www.hotmail.com" or "http://mail.live.com". Regardless of which address I type, via web redirects the eventual web page I always wind up in is "https://outlook.live.com".

Anyway, I am now able to read emails again via IE9!!?? The issue seems to have resolved itself!?

Although the issue is sort of "solved", I'm not really sure what happened and what the solution is/was?

townsbg · 12 Jul 2018

Why are you using IE 9? M$ has moved on to only supporting 11 or edge for their sites so that might be the cause. A 400 error on a website is usually something on the server side. So if they haven't blocked IE 9 functionality there could have been a brief outage. Maybe they've incorporated something in the site not supported by IE 9 like html 5. It could also be that the light mode wasn't functioning correctly. If this happens again I'd say update to IE 11.

meeshu · 13 Jul 2018

Using IE10 or a later version causes outlook.live.com site to automatically load the "full" or "normal" version of the site. This means that it would take at least 10 minutes or so to load the web page via my slow internet connection. And there is NO option to change to the "light" or "lite" version of the web site either when using IE10 or later.

It's only by using IE9 that outlook.live.com automatically loads the light/lite version of the web site. This means that it only takes some seconds to load the web page content which is far more suitable for my purposes at the moment.

I'll only upgrade IE when really necessary, but this would probably mean having to wait 10 plus minutes to load "outlook" web pages which is something I'm not really wanting to do.

mrjimphelps · 13 Jul 2018

Try another browser, such as Firefox.

meeshu · 13 Jul 2018

Thanks, I've tried most other browsers including Firefox, Pale Moon, Opera and Chrome.

Using any of the other browsers always results in the normal or full version of outlook being loaded, which means it takes 10+ minutes to load the web page! The ONLY browser at the moment which loads the light/lite version of outlook is IE9.

townsbg · 13 Jul 2018

meeshu said:

Using IE10 or a later version causes outlook.live.com site to automatically load the "full" or "normal" version of the site. This means that it would take at least 10 minutes or so to load the web page via my slow internet connection. And there is NO option to change to the "light" or "lite" version of the web site either when using IE10 or later.

It's only by using IE9 that outlook.live.com automatically loads the light/lite version of the web site. This means that it only takes some seconds to load the web page content which is far more suitable for my purposes at the moment.

I'll only upgrade IE when really necessary, but this would probably mean having to wait 10 plus minutes to load "outlook" web pages which is something I'm not really wanting to do.

I'm not questioning why you are using dial up, that's your prerogative and your money, but due to the prevalence of high speed connections the internet isn't designed for dial up anymore. The websites are more and more complicated with graphics that require more bandwidth than you can get with dial up. You really need at least a DSL connection to get halfway decent response on the internet. Personally I would rather not have the internet than to waste my money on something that would drive me insane to try to use. I couldn't image using dial up anymore. It was hard enough 15 years ago when the internet was simpler.

As for outlook.com, I suspect that you are getting this "lite" mode as you call it because IE9 doesn't have the capability to display elements introduced in later versions. M$ doesn't intend on any user using anything short of 11 on their sites and frankly I'm surprised that it's halfway functional. I think that you can continue to expect issues until you upgrade and I wouldn't be surprised if you eventually can't use it at all. Really it isn't a mode that M$ built for low speed connections but it is caused by version 9's inability to display the site correctly. That's what's causing your issues. I guarantee you that if you contact their tech support and tell them that you are using IE 9 they will tell you that it is incompatible and that you need to upgrade to continue to use the site. If you want further reading on the 400 error you can try this article. 400 Bad Request Error: What It Is and How to Fix It

meeshu · 14 Jul 2018

I can't afford a broadband connection at the moment due to severe financial limitations. So I am forced to use a slower dial-up connection.

Just glad that I can once again use outlook in light/lite mode which is far more convenient (and logical) because of my present slow internet connection.

When future issues arise while using outlook, and IF there are other options available to me at that time (depends heavily on my financial situation), I'll then look at other options at that time.

townsbg · 15 Jul 2018

If you continue to receive those bad requests errors it's because their server doesn't understand IE 9's requests because it is programmed for 11, probably HTML 5. When you start receiving that error on multiple sites you won't really have any other option than updating. Again I don't believe that this lite mode is built in to outlook.com as the name would indicate but is the result of your browser displaying what it understands. Calling it a mode would indicated that Microsoft built it in with the intention of it being use by low speed internet connections. There are other ways of access outlook without using the website. One way is to use an email client. Setting up an Outlook.com IMAP account