It is common for people to forget their passwords or in rare cases get their accounts hacked by someone. The worst part of this scenario is that the email account and associated Windows Live services like messenger and skydrive might contain sensitive data that can be misused.

The worst scenario is when you loose the hotmail password and also loose access to the alternate email address that was provided. Lets see what can be done incase one of the above situations took place.

How to get back a hacked Hotmail account / Windows Live account

The first and simplest step is to try using the Forgot your password link. Follow the steps on that page and see if you can recover the hotmail account’s password. The password can be reset using the alternate email id that was in the account.

If your hotmail account was hacked chances are the alternate email id was changed. In this case we can try to get some assistance from the Windows Live Validation team.

Head over to the Windows Live Validation page that helps with account password recovery. This should be used only if you cannot reset your password using the secret question or alternate email address. Follow the instructions on the following pages which choosing the most relevant answers.

This process will create a temporary Windows Live Solution Centre account that will be valid for 30 days. An agent will ask you questions related to your account and if you can answer them correctly and prove your ownership, you can expect to get the hacked Windows Live account restored to you. This process requires you to have an alternate email id, you will get a link to access the Live solution centre forum to answer the questions posted by the agent.

Try to provide all the right answers and if possible more details that yould help verify yours ownership on the account. This process usually takes 48-72 hours so be prepared to wait.

You can also take a look at our How to get back a lost gmail account post.