Authentication Errors

Question

Good evening everyone. Someone apparently hacked my hotmail account for the first time in 20+ years. This being said dealing with MS has been a nightmare and making me want to transfer everything over to Gmail.

So I wanted to change my password since someone may have access (makes sense right). So yesterday I send for a code under forgot password. Had it texted to me and literally copied and pasted....error doesn't match. Tried again but from one of my 2 PCs....different code same result....rinse repeat no codes worked and now 24hr wait. I chatted with MS "support" which basically just said wait 6-8 hours and try again im stuck in a loop (wow). So i went to bed woke up this morning and still can't get codes. (actually I was able to get one for something else I was trying to do). I am literally just trying to find anyway to get my account restored and password finally changed. Meanwhile some hacker can do whatever they want to my account but the actual owner cannot. I am able to login on this PC but can only do minor things since anything I want to do requires a password or shocker an authentication code. Cant add account to authenticator because.....yep need a code. What can I do? If all 4 or 5 codes yesterday were all not matching than the chances are high today they will not match. Oh and I sent a recovery form in...then got an instant response they disregard that because I have 2FA on or something along those lines so there went that other option.

I am at my wits end and just want to change my password one time and move everything over to another safer email.

Answer 1

Hi Animeboy1984

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

I understand that your account is under threat from hackers and you want to change your account password. I understand very well how you feel, it has happened to me too.

Come on let's protect your account together.

According to your description, you have two-factor authentication turned on for your account, so you must have multiple authentication methods set up for your account, is it mobile, email and authenticator? But it sounds like your authenticator is currently unavailable, so the only options available are mobile and email right?

The fact that you're receiving SMS and email verification codes is good news, it means that the verification methods you've set up are still associated with your account. However, the frequent ‘No match, try again’ errors are very strange. Have you clicked Send Captcha more than once, incorrectly using the first Captcha that was sent instead of the latest one? If not, then maybe your account is being requested to send CAPTCHA frequently elsewhere.

For your account, please click on the Microsoft Account Management page and try resetting your password again.

If you encounter the alert, ‘The current method is not available, please change the authentication method’, it is recommended that you change to another device to reset your account password. This morning when I used my computer to visit the Microsoft account management page to verify, I also encountered this error, so I changed the mobile browser, using traffic to visit the page, the result is normal, which is really very frustrating. Here are some suggestions:

1、You can change the network environment of the device that sends verification code and receives verification code such as (such as wi-fi, mobile phone hotspot)

2、I suggest you use the privacy mode of your browser to send the security verification code.

3、You can replace the kernel of a different browser to re-send the code (such as edge browser replaced by Firefox)

4、Check the spam file box in your mailbox/Phone, the security verification code may be wrongly identified as spam, please confirm it in the spam mail.

I hope that my reply has been helpful to you. If you have any other questions, reply to me at the bottom of this post at any time.

Best wishes

Forry.F - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist