Yesterday was a day of headaches for Microsoft as the software giant struggled to find out why tens of millions of users were left unable to access everything from Windows Live Mail – formerly Hotmail – and Xbox Live to Skydrive Live and Live Messenger.

The problems were fixed within a couple of hours. Coincidentally, just before the outage began, Microsoft revealed that a good part of the Windows Live servers were already running the upcoming Windows Server 2008.

A representative for Microsoft was quick to state that the problems had nothing to do with the new operating system, however, and instead attributed the outage to a glitch with the company’s Live ID service – though it didn’t provide further details. Glitches aside, the news come at an uncomfortable time for Microsoft with the company’s latest OS, Windows Server 2008, scheduled to launch later today.