If you are outside the US but would like to get hold of a Windows Live email address with the .com suffix rather than .co.uk, for instance, you will either have to phone a friend in the US to register the address for you or else somehow find a way to circumvent the geo tag that the Live.com signup page adds to the URL, which blocks the .com option.

Well, you might try a proxy, but most of those will not parse all the required scripts, not to mention you’d be leaving your account wide open to hackers.

There is an alternative, that uses a proxy to generate the US-tagged link you need, which you then strip out of the proxy and paste into a new browser window. First use a proxy or anonymizer, such as the-cloak.com to visit the Live signup page.

If you’re in the UK, the signup page proper is

http://get.live.com/getlive/overview

Use the-cloak.com to visit that page and click signup. Do NOT enter any details. Because the-claok is a US proxy, when you cut and paste the URL in the address bar it will be geotagged for US visitors. Now, paste the address into a plain text editor and strip off the first part of the URL

http://www.the-cloak.com/Cloaked/+cfg=32/

You will be left with a URL that looks like this but all on one line.

https%3A//signup.live.com/newuser.aspx?
mkt=en-us&revipc=US&ts=4128915&sh=rHqr
&hm=1&ru=http%3a%2f%2fget.live.com
%2fgetlive%2fcongratulations
&rx=http%3a%2f%2fget.live.com%2f
getlive%2foverview%26ns%3d1

You now need to tidy up those %3A codes and replace them with : where appropriate and the %2f should be a normal single forward slash.

You should be left with the following, but on a single line

http://signup.live.com/newuser.aspx?mkt=en-us
&revipc=US&ts=4128915&sh=rHqr&hm=1&ru=

http://get.live.com/getlive/congratulations&rx=

http://get.live.com/getlive/overview%26ns%3d1

Copy and paste the URL into a new browser window, hit enter, and you should be taken to the signup page, where you will find, miraculously, that @live.com is now available as an address option.

Unfortunately, as with everything MS there are error messages to contend with, you may on your first attempt see the following:

We are working to fix a temporary problem with our sign-up service. Please try again. Error code: 31

This is not related to the issue of getting the @live.com option. Clear your browser cache and start again. Drop me a line from your new @live.com address when you get it to work.