Microsoft’s Bing stops working for some users, spits out useless error message (Update: Fixed)

Microsoft’s Bing is experiencing some technical difficulties. The issue, which began Wednesday night, does not appear to be affecting everyone, and it is currently unclear how widespread it is.

A quick search on Twitter, however, shows that multiple users are confused about the odd error message. Here’s what it looks like:

The first two sections of the error message appear to be randomly generated while the third is simply the current time. Here are five subsequent refreshes of bing.com:

Ref A: 12d05b2d23034d1b9119e6f02d0b5c5c Ref B: 8AF3E103F9D2E1E76217680F93DF1F79 Ref C: Wed Apr 24 21:32:46 2013 PST
Ref A: 9963061f969b4d4c9d8b3c03a63dca31 Ref B: C168540197A8D4FAC735E7504F0253AB Ref C: Wed Apr 24 21:32:51 2013 PST
Ref A: 6ed24744ed904cd1b4d3c51661e2caf9 Ref B: 488752F8972E6157F4D68C76138BE215 Ref C: Wed Apr 24 21:32:54 2013 PST
Ref A: 6bd7bedb533d4ae79c5a1622e421300b Ref B: 7EEAF5C0B33042D3BDDE412C793DFC10 Ref C: Wed Apr 24 21:32:57 2013 PST
Ref A: fe3eef844df842ddb3a15bff7efd033a Ref B: CA53E1615467FBA2C0518BD04979DE0A Ref C: Wed Apr 24 21:33:00 2013 PST

Yet Bing seems to be working fine for others. Here’s what the service currently looks like if you can reach it:

Whether bing.com is working for you or not, please let us know in the comments below. Include your location so we can try to narrow down if this is only affecting certain countries.

In the meantime, we have contacted Microsoft about the issue. We will update this article if we hear back.

Update at 12:55 AM EST: Just like that, Bing.com is back. It’s still unclear what caused the problem, but we’re glad it was resolved so quickly (about 45 minutes).

Top Image credit: Bryan Forstner