After having no email for 10 days, Hotmail users have discovered another reason to be annoyed.

Hotmail accounts for some of the 330,000 people who have been shut out of the system started working by Wednesday morning, but a number of customers were dismayed that all of their data, including addresses and saved messages, were erased. A spokeswoman for Microsoft's free Hotmail service, which has 66 million users, confirmed that the email accounts for many of them are still inaccessible because the hardware for one of the company's servers is being repaired. She said she did not know any more details about the defect or when it would be fixed. But if users are finding they have access to their accounts but have lost information, it is possible their services were not completely restored and that later on they will be able to retrieve their lost data, she said. Frustrated customers who have emailed tech support are receiving a generic message from a MSN Hotmail customer support representative named "Bazil." "During the recent network improvements that we performed on the machine that holds your account, there has been a slight extension of our maintenance routine," the message reads. "This is to fully make our system work efficiently for you." Hotmail's spokeswoman continued to plea for customers' patience. She said users could access email by opening up another Hotmail account.