I’ve been wondering for a little while now if it’s possible or not to switch domain name hosts on the Microsoft Office Live Basics Beta, and well I’ve now had my question answered, seems it is possible, here’s what somebody did, shame about the grammatical errors in his post though:

Microsoft is offering to give you a free domain if you signup for Microsoft Office Live Basics Beta (http://officelive.microsoft.com/default.aspx)

The only catch is, there is no technical support once you get a domain. However, I did not know this prior to signing up (and they do not tell you this ANYWHERE in the signup process).

So, I signed up a domain name for a company I started. however, when I accessed my account, I was horrified to find that I could not change the host from being Microsoft to my own personal hosting provider.

This seriously troubled me. So, I went through the entire site and NO WHERE does it say how to do this. I instead decided to do some contacting on my own.

I first contacted their support center (800 number), who then turned me over to their MSN support, who then connected me to Microsoft Office Support, who then transfered me to MSN. After all thsi, they finally say “Sorry, we do not have a phone-support for this product beause it’s still in beta. You will just have to look on the site and find out soem information that way”.

So I did and tehre was nothing. I had already printed out the legal documents and everything I agreed too and went through it with a fine comb pen. Nothing in it said I couldn’t change the host, and nothing said I could.

So, I went to a friend who was a registrar and asked if he could change my name server information. He looked it up and said “Sorry dude, it says teh stat is REGISTRAR-LOCKED, meaning you can’t update/delete it”

However, it also said that I was the owner of the domain. So, I went back and did a whois on network solutions, Sure enough it said I owned teh domain, but that Micrsofot was the technical contact. however, it also said that Microsoft was not the registrar, but Melbourne IT!

So, I went to melbourne’s site (http://www.melbourneit.com.au/)

This company is hosted in Australia with only one US contact in San Fransico. The only problem is they did not provide a phone number to them. So, I did a little googling and found that number (1 510 595 2003).

I ended up speaking with 1 person who was the singular contact for Melbourne. I explained to her that I was wanting to swtich the domain’s HOST to be something else, as it was currently be hosting somewhere else. She explained I needed to create an account through Melbourne to access the domain.

I promptly explaind taht I did not go through them, but Micrsofot instead. She said “that’s find, you just need to create an account. Then you can do whatever youw ant with the domain”. So I did.

After creating an account, she then walked me through adding the domain to my new account so that I could control it. Only it needed a registration key in order to complete the process (which I did not have). So, I told her about this, and told her I didnot have the key. She said “That’s ok, use this one” and gave it to me.

Now their program emaield me a NEW registration key I could use to manage my domain.

So, I waited and sure enough it came right in. I instantly went back into the account, and PRESTO! I now have control over how the domain will be used.

So, I quickly UNLOCKED it, and changed the nameserver to my own host nameserver. SAVE COMPLETE!. I then re-locked it, and changed teh technical support information to my own personal information.

That worked too. Now I’m the owner, and the tehnical contact.

So, I go to http://www.directnic.com to verify the name server had changed since network solutions takes forever.. and it did.

Now, I have a free domain via Micrsofot, and I couldn’t be happier.

Thanks Microsoft! Their product rules, and it’s great to see they are willing to give back to their users 😉

Via: LPLUG