I'm posting this for a friend of mine:

She's messed up a new Microsoft account she was trying to set up for her new Surface RT. She got the verification mail, but when she clicked the link, it said the service was unavailable.

Now, she can no longer log in (she forgot what password she entered exactly).

When she goes to https://account.live.com/acsr?sol=&sig=&cxt=Default to recover her password, it says: "The Microsoft account you've entered does not exist."

No problem I think, we'll register again. But on this page (https://signup.live.com/signup.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0&rpsnv=11&ct=1382338484&rver=6.1.6206.0&wp=SAPI&wreply=https:%2F%2Faccount.live.com%2Fsummarypage.aspx&id=38936&bk=1382338503&uiflavor=web&mkt=EN-US&lc=1033&lic=1), it says: "marliesvanderh***@gmail.com isn't available.".

There's also a page to reset (not recover) your password: https://account.live.com/password/reset. Here, she gets the message: "The Microsoft account is incorrect. Please try again."

So I guess the account is locked somewhere in the Microsoft databases. As this her my primary email address, she very much would like to set up a MS account with this email address (the Hotmail address she's using now is for newsletters, shops, etc).

I can provide the gmail address in a PM if necessary.