Error with apple mail

Hi. ive been using apple mail for my school email as well as my personal hotmail. all has been working fine until today. Apple mail cant seem to get online with my hotmail account. The error message displayed is as follow

Unable to Receive Mail

There may be a problem with the mail server or network. Verify the settings for account “Windows Live” or try again.

The server returned the error: The attempt to read data from the server “pop3.live.com” failed.

Please help

I've seen that happen every so often with webmail servers like gmail. In my experience, they straighten themselves out within a few hours. I've always thought it might have something to do with techs fooling around with the servers. Anyway, if it isn't working after a reasonable time, then I would go back and delete and re-enter my settings both on Mail and at gmail. I have a gmail account, and I simply have gmail forward my mail to my ISP maintained mail account. Then I have Mail retrieve it from there. That avoids depending on the POP communication between Mail and gmail.

Hotmail is a trick of its own. For mobile devices and pop accounts hotmail wants the user to reverify their account every 90 days.

I'm not sure if this applies to pop in particular but I know for sure it requires revalidation on mobile devices.

Try reentering your account information in the preferences of apple mail to revalidate your account. Otherwise check your pop settings in hotmail to verify that pop is still enabled.

I will check my hotmail account and let you know if I find anything else you can check.