I lost my MSN Hotmail password - how do I access my account?

I lost my MSN Hotmail password - how do I access my account?This is a question that a lot of people ask, because, well, a lot of people forget their passwords to their MSN Hotmail accounts.Now this doesn't have to be the disaster that you might think it is, as long as you set up your account properly and you remember how you set it up.

There are a few things that you can do to access your MSN Hotmail account if you've lost your password.Here are the steps that you're going to need to take.

1.When you go to the MSN Hotmail homepage, look at the place where you type in your email address and then below that you type in your password.Right below the password field is a link that says "Forgot your password?"Click on it.

2.The next screen that you will see will have an extremely strange, almost unreadable combination of letters and numbers.You will have to type these characters that you see in the field directly below them.This little step is because there are computers out there that troll the Internet and try to get in people's email accounts.If they can hit upon just the right combination of letters and numbers-which they will try to do through complicated mathematical formulas-they can get into your email account and start spamming.These little copy-the-characters-below exercises are impossible for the machines to figure out.So this step is to ensure that you are, indeed, a living, breathing, human.

3.So if you can manage to correctly copy the characters, you'll be taken to a page that gives you two options:
--Send yourself a password reset e-mail message.
--Provide account information and answer your secret question.

4.Send yourself a password reset e-mail message
This is the option that you want to be able to take, because it's hassle-free and fast.When you set up your MSN Hotmail account, you had the option to list an alternate email address.This alternate email address is for this very situation-if you forget your password, Hotmail will send you a link letting you change your password to your other alternate email address.So just click on the first link, and then Hotmail will send you a message to your alternate email address telling you how to change your password.But this only works if you put down an alternate email address when you set up the account, or sometime later.You can't do that now if you haven't done it before this point.Go to the next step.

5.Provide account information and answer your secret question.
Click on this link.Then you will be taken to another page that is titled Confirm Your Account Information.At this point, you are going to have to enter in various information exactly as you entered it when you set up your account.Hope you remember it! You are going to enter in your country, state, and zip code (or applicable information for your geographical location).Then you'll have to answer a secret question.You choose this secret question when you set up your account.It can be something like "who was your first grade teacher?""who was your first kiss""where did you go on your honeymoon" "where did you wish that you went on your honeymoon" "what's the name of your pet fish" and other things like that.You have to remember the answer to your secret question.If you don't remember your secret answer to your secret question, then you are going to have to set up another account, because there's no way that you can get into this account.

So you've answered your secret question correctly.Then you'll be taken to the screen titled Create a Password.Once again, you will enter in a new password, you will retype your password, and then you can choose whether or not you want your password to expire.Then Hotmail will prompt you to enter in an alternate email address, which you should definitely do at this time.It will make the next time you forget your password and want to access your MSN Hotmail account a lot easier.