Microsoft Australia blames ISP for domain failure

update Software giant Microsoft's Web site has been inaccessible for at least 24 hours due to an Internet service provider "problem", and not a DDoS attack.

Microsoft.com.au usually redirects to microsoft.com/australia automatically but instead, visitors to the Web site received an error message.

A spokesperson for Microsoft Australia said the ISP -- which they chose not to name -- was to blame for the downtime.

"The local ISP here had a bit of a hiccup and the redirect wasn't working. The [ISP] reinstated it -- or tried to reinstate it last night but something fell over. We were told at 10.30am that the .com.au redirect will be working within two hours.

"There was no DDoS attack. We are trying to work out what is going on. We would prefer not to identify the ISP," the spokesperson told ZDNet Australia in a telephone interview this morning.

According to Netcraft, microsoft.com.au is hosted by WebCentral.

Microsoft is under intense pressure at the moment after a flaw in the company's OneCare Live antivirus software caused an unknown number of Outlook and Outlook Express users to lose all their e-mails. The problem occurs since OneCare mistakenly deletes the users' .pst file, which contains all e-mail messages.