Windows Live seems to be experiencing wide ranging issues this evening (GMT –8 here), including problems signing in to Messenger, Zune Marketplace, and especially Hotmail.  In trying to sign in to one Hotmail account here, a strange message appears instead:

Currently there are multiple reports of the problems on Twitter (a real time search link), including some reports from @Microsoft_cares (who is not a Microsoft employee, by the way), and a number of LiveSide readers are reporting issues as well.

If you are currently experiencing problems, it’s not just you.  We’ll try to find out what’s going on and update as soon as we hear anything.