Hotmail fails with authentication error from Android, and or smartphone applications

Recently I spent some time trouble shooting why my wife’s Hotmail would not work on here Android phone. As this article states it should work.

http://www.windowslivehelp.com/solution.aspx?solutionid=f49bdf1f-8bb9-47e4-9633-e3a6ba15e2f8

However I kept receiving an authentication error, and it seemed like the password or username was incorrect. but I could log onto the web based Hotmail with no problem. Interestingly I could try to authenticate with the android application a hundred times and it would not lock me out of Hotmail.

What a conundrum I kept trying for a while then remember something. some applications on android devices have a problem with long passwords. Hotmail supports long and complex passwords but many applications are still being written to only accept 14 characters or less.

My password I was using was 17 characters, Low and behold I change it to a 14 character password and BAM all starts to sync.

I wish programmers would learn long passwords are better. hopefully some day they will.

About Mitch Roberson

Having worked as a consultant at multiple VAR’s as well as Microsoft. Mitch has had the experience of Seeing a multitude of environments. As well as working with both Network, Systems and Security teams. This has allowed him to broaden his knowledge in many areas of IT. Because of this broad experience it has driven him to an almost fanatical desire to have visibility in his environments so he can understand what is happening with in an environment. He still is responsible for day to day operations of Active Directory, Exchange, and much more. But his passion is to learn how applications communicate so he can decrease mean time to resolution.

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3 Responses to Hotmail fails with authentication error from Android, and or smartphone applications

pw says:

March 2, 2012 at 7:01 am

Thank you thank you thank you……my password was 19 characters and changed to a shorter one and it worked perfectly……

fk says:

September 24, 2012 at 12:12 pm

I dont think this is about the password length. I do have a 7 char password, which was workign fine this this morning, and after that suddenly started complaining. I am not weven able to delete and recreate the account, while it works just fine on my laptop

- Mitch Roberson says:
  
  October 5, 2012 at 4:10 pm
  
  This is for a specific situation with certain phones it may not be your situation. But we do know there is a password length limitation for some applications. so for some this will fix their problems others it may not.