Windows 8 and MS Accounts
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Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom ;-) have decided to encourage users to associate their Windows 8 login to a Microsoft Account. There is one massive downside here. My mother, while installing her new Win8 laptop, created a new Windows Live account (now renamed, yet again, to Microsoft Accounts) associated with her existing ISP email account. Now we'd like to change that to be a new "Outlook.com" email account, so she's not permanently tied to an ISP. Windows Live does not seem to allow changing the associated email address, or at least not as far as I can tell. Consequently, we can find no way of changing this. I foresee some problems... 1. An ISP could go bust, effectively breaking the system. 2. She may want to change ISP in future, but her MS account is tied to the ISP account. 3. Any Metro app purchases are tied to her MS account, so reinstalling with a new account means she's lost any investment in apps, along with settings etc. I've spent half a day struggling with this and come up a blank. Anyone got any suggestions? Failing that, how on earth am I supposed to get support from MS nowadays for this kind of issue? I cannot seem to find any support info through their web sites anymore. PS. I've tried the "Rename account" or "Change email account" options under Microsoft Account. These simply go to a page saying "The email address associated with your Microsoft account cannot be changed" message. Very helpful.
Perhaps you could make a new MS Account, then use Windows Easy Transfer to migrate her data and settings over to it? Disclaimer: I have not tried this.
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Which puts you in a boat up a certain creek with a lot of other people without paddles. I really hope MS figures this out because i see this being a common problem.
Don't comment your code - it was hard to write, it should be hard to read!
Yup. Somehow the Windows Phone Marketplace and the Windows 8 Store seem to use the same underlying customer database as xbox live!!!. I first came across the issue 4 years ago when I got my xbox but then when I got a WinPhone 7 I needed to buy apps so I went though "the process". Typically of MS, since they had already had a way to change the xbox live account, using an xbox, they figured that their job was already done. - Obviously a web-version of the form isn't necessary right? BTW Their official advice for those people without an xbox - Ask a friend if you can borrow theirs.