Microsoft said late Tuesday that it had resolved the issue that kept many users from accessing many of its online services for most of the day.

Windows Live Service Experiences Blackout

The outage affected services including Windows Live Mail Hotmail, Xbox Live, Skydrive and Live Messenger. Microsoft has not said what caused the outage.

By 7 p.m. EST Tuesday, Microsoft said the problem had been fixed and all services were operating. "Earlier today, an issue began that has caused some consumers worldwide to experience difficulty logging in to their Windows Live ID accounts," said Samantha McManus, product manger for Windows Live.

"This issue has since been resolved and normal operations have been restored to all customers." Microsoft said the outage issue only impacted the log-in process for users and did not affect users who were already logged in.

"Microsoft worked aggressively to resolve this unique problem as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this issue has caused consumers," McManus said.

This was not the first time Microsoft services have been down. Close to a year ago Live Messenger, Live Mail and other services were not available to users for part of a day. In April 2007, Live Mail and Messenger were not operating for a number of hours. In each case Microsoft did not say what caused the outages.