Okay, so last week I decided on buying a new laptop. Went to the nearest Best Buy, and ran into an old buddy of mine. Turns out he's working at Best Buy and offers to help me with my purchase. He asks what I'm looking for spec wise. My response was something simple to use. I don't want it for gaming. Well, except maybe for minecraft. He shows me a laptop they had on sale that weekend, HP ENVY m6, intel core i5 2.6 Ghz quad-core cpu, 8 gb ram, simple pass finger scanner, 15.2 inch MOLED screen and running on Windows 8. Price tag: $469.99. For a hundred dollars more I could have gotten a touch screen. Seemed simple enough to use. Price was very good. (I think). I don't know much about PC's, but that price difinitely had me sold.
So I get home and start the inital set up. To my surprise Windows 8 was very fast. I liked the new tile set up. The screen was beautiful, and everything seemed fine. I enter my windows live ID so I can link it with my laptop for smartglass use. (part of the initial set up.) And then all the problems began. Windows 8 automatically tries to verify if your e-mail is attached to a windows live ID, but for some reason it could not verify. It could not verify my identity either, which would play a large role in the host of problems that came along with windows not being able to verify your e-mail address. I thought nothing of it at first. I thought to myself, 'oh well'. Not being able to link it with my xbox for smartglass didn't bother me. At least everything else is fine. Or so I thought. I open up the web browser and windows redirects me to a loading screen. I wait for a few minutes. Nothing happened. So I close browser and start over. I enter web page. And it shows the page for a fraction of a second before redirecting me to the loading screen again. I knew something was wrong immediately then. I tried going into my e-mail, which happened to be a facebook e-mail at the moment. (its the one tied to my xbox live id). And there was an e-mail from MS to verify my email. I click on the link and it directs me to a 404 age error. I restart the pc and at the beginning screen it prompts me to verify e-mail address. I try to change e-mail, but in order to do that it sends a link to my facebook address. I click on the link to remove the facebook e-mail and add another, and it redirects me to a 404 page error. Again. I thought to myself, it's nothing, I'll fix it later. And I move on to trying to download ms office for my laptop. For those that don't know, MS office does not come with a disk anymore. It comes with a down load key card. I log on to the website to enter down load key, and get redirected to the blank verify e-mail load screen. Again.
At this point I decided to call MS for help. They told me that the reason ie10 wasn't working or anything else for that matter is because the system HAS to verify e-mail address. I ask them why, they could not elaborate. I explain to them the problem I'm having with e-mail verification and they offer to remote access my pc and help me out. Once logged in to my laptop, they log into my e-mail address and attempt to use the link. Same problem, 404 page error. They send a new link to my e-mail address. 23 times. And attempted to verify me 23 times and could not. I ask if I can get verified over the phone. They tell the only way is to send a link to my email address. They then put a tech on fthe remote access and he attempted to solve the issue of fresh links being redirected to a 404 error page. He then asks me if I have verified my e-mail address yet. I explain to him the ENTIRE situation, and it left me wondering if it was ever going to be solved and how many times I'm going to have to explain the entire situation to a new person. I thought they were supposed to pass the error information on to the next person. He pulls up an error page and tells me all my ports are corrupted. and thats why nothing works. I tell him that the previous tech said it was a verification issue, not hardware issue. He goes on to say that it's definitely a hardware issue, and asks how long I've owned the laptop. I tell him it's brand new, only hours old. Not even a day. He goes on to say that he's sorry he can't help me with hardware issues.
I call up a buddy of mine that used to work for microsoft as an I.T. and he happened to be in the area and offered to stop by and help. He ran some tests on the pc and found nothing wrong with the hardware. Windows 8 was missing over 40 updates. All drivers needed to be updated. We proceed to update and attempt to verify e-mail. Nothing solved. Same issue. He ran a few tests and figured out the problem. Windows 8 is not comaptible with facebook hyperlinks. Too many redirects. So I start a new e-mail account with gmail. And try to link it to the laptop. And the only way to link another e-mail address is, yet another verification link to facebook. We call MS for help and asked if they can send the link to my gmail address instead. They tell me I have to remove the facebook link first, or restart the entire pc through recovery and start fresh. No other way of removing facebook e-mail. Problem with that was, even if i restarted and got the g-mail linked, my copy of ms office was linked to that e-mail and the only way to solve that was a verification link to facebook. Same old loop over and over. I ask them if I can switch my windows live id to a different email. They said sure. And then sent me a link to my facebook e-mail. I don't know if the tech understood what was going on. My buddy checks the link through my ipad, and same thing. 404 page error. So he figured it might be my internet connection and drove to his house just to check if we can use the link over another connection. Same problem. But he said it's not just a windows 8 problem if I cant verify the link on his mac or my ipad over a different connection. His theory is facebook is using to many redirects in in their hyperlink.
I've had e-mail issues before with my live ID. And I remeber being able to switch my email for my live ID. So I call 1 800 4 my xbox. And they were immediately able to solve the e-mail switch and gave me 500 ms points for my troubles. I enter my g-mail and it automatically linked. All my problems, or at least most of them seemed to have disappeared once my e-mail was verified.
Does anyone else have windows 8 and are encountering the same issues as me?
Which brings me to my current problem......I am trying to update my profile sig. But none of the buttons I click on seem to work. They do absolutely nothing. The little tree symbol doesn't even give me the option to open in a new page.
Could this be an internet explorer issue?
Open to any suggestions,
