Friend Lost Access to Account of 15 years and Needs Help

xW6 · Jun 4, 2023

My friend has had his Xbox account for over 15 years at this point since High-school. The other night we were playing Destiny 2 when his account logged him out while still in a mission asking him to confirm his password. He entered his password and everything but Xbox then prompted him to send an email to his current email to confirm his credentials etc.

Here comes the main issue. He has been using our old high-schools email account since he created his account. It isn’t using a .edu or anything but was given by the school. The email account has been unable to receive messages since 2018. However, he is still able to send emails from the account. Since he is unable to receive messages he cannot receive the code required to verify his credentials. He has reached out to our old schools IT department to see if they would be able to reactivate the email for him but our then principal let him know they do not have the ability to do so.

This brings us to another problem. The recovery form is what I have been having him fill out the last couple of days. He has all of the information required to recover his account as he has spent $1000+ on the account and bought multiple Xboxs at this point. The form takes all of his information perfectly fine adding additional information as well. One issue is that there is no option for Xbox Series X as a console that he owns to enter on the form. Anyways, the form is sent and he receives an email short after stating the email is a .edu email and he needs to reach out to the school for assistance. Which puts him in an endless loop…

Is there any possible non automated form for him to possibly fill out for account recovery. I can’t imagine losing thousands of dollars and hours of his life playing games and enjoying them to lose them entirely and basically be told tough luck. I have no doubt he has all of the information required for the account recovery to be successful but it saying the account is a .edu email when it obviously isn’t is causing an issue.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

:)

xW6

Thank you for the response! At his point he is starting to believe someone hacked into his account. He receives emails on another email about purchase he makes on the account. However, that additional email does not appear when trying to recover the account.

Another oddity is when viewing his Xbox Network profile all captures/clips he has created have entirely disappeared from his account. He uploads a lot of clips and for them to all go away in one fail swoop is very suspicious

WattyNuela

Hello, if your friend thinks their account has been compromised, and they lost the access long time ago. I'm afraid to say the possibilities of recovering the account are low.

Your friend can try using the Microsoft interactive guide below to see if that helps to gain access again to the account:
https://support.microsoft.com/account-billing/h...

WattyNuela

Hello XW6, this is Manuela. I'm an Independent Advisor and community user like you, ready to assist with this.
Not a Microsoft employee.

I'm sorry to hear your friend lost access to their Microsoft account. When we lost access to our accounts, we can try to recover it following all the recommendations available in this related article:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com...

I would like to let you know that besides the options described in the article above and the recovery form, is not possible to recover the account in any other way.

I know this answer can be frustrating, but the assistance for this topic is very limited.

As a reminder, please notice that no one at Microsoft can view or change the account details for you, this is for security policies

Rodrigo Oliver

Hi Richard, my name is Rodrigo. I'm an Independent Advisor and a member of the Microsoft community and I'd love to assist you today.

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community. My name is Rodrigo and I'm happy to help.

I'm sorry you're experiencing this problem. I understand how important recovering your account is to you.

The account recovery form can only be used if two-step verification isn't turned on.

If you did not have 2FA active on the account, and the account was not deleted due to inactivity, you will need to try the Account Recovery Form: https://account.live.com/acsr

Detailed steps on how to use the Account Recovery Form can be found here: https://support.microsoft.com/office/b19c02d1-a782-dee6-93c3-dc8113b20c42

Microsoft takes account security very seriously, that's why Account Recovery is an automated process with no human influence. If you don't have the correct information, you may not be able to get through account verification using the Recovery Form.

The Account Recovery Form requires adequate information to prove that you are the owner of the account. The Account Recovery Process can be a time-consuming process, but providing as much info as possible from the start of the process will increase the possibility of being verified by the automated process. You'll need to keep trying until you're verified by Microsoft.

Remember to use a familiar device from which you've frequently accessed your Microsoft account, as well as a familiar location. Microsoft will review your responses and respond within 24 hours. If you are verified, instructions on how to log back into your account will be sent to you, and if you are not verified, you will need to submit the Account Recovery form again. You can do this up to 2 times every 24 hours.

It's important to note that Microsoft Support will not be able to grant you access to your account, you will be sent back to the Account Recovery pages that have been linked above.

If your Microsoft account recovery request was not granted or was unsuccessful, please click the attached link for more information: https://support.microsoft.com/office/dc56c3e3-dff0-4ed5-8edb-60290eea6b53

While it might not be the outcome you are looking for, if you’re unsuccessful in recovering your account, then you will need to create a new Microsoft account. You can do that by clicking this link: https://signup.live.com/

Let me know if you need more help.

Regards,

Rodrigo

Daft Badger

Your friends mother would need to follow the lost password solution
here

No one here can do anything as we do not have access to any account info.

Friend Lost Access to Account of 15 years and Needs Help