I only had one email addressee on Hotmail that I really needed to contact and I finally was able to contact her via other means so no great loss now if hotmail is gone for good. Will try to access it tomorrow via another computer.
Yesterday morning I got a weird screen when trying a couple of times, then on third or fourth try I was able to get in.
I have yahoo.com and mail.com accounts that get little use. Partly because of the problems you encountered, I am weaning off of hotmail. They are not customer-friendly. Was going to use Gmail and created an account, but I'm not crazy about the interface.
Yahoo is in the process of upgrading their email, so I've upgraded and will use the beta. The interface seems good.
This website has an 800 number that reaches MSN support. Since Hotmail is part of MSN (kind of), maybe it can help if you have not resolved yet. 800-386-5550.