Years and years ago, possibly when in Seattle visiting the ASP.NET team, I set up a Windows LiveID account and stupidly set it to the US region. This wasn’t a problem until two years ago when I got my WP7 phone, where I couldn’t sign up for things because my account was US based; I couldn’t see UK based content and to login to the Zune software I had to set my Windows region to US. Last year (late to the game) I bought an XBox 360 and had the same problem, which because worse when the BBC launched their integrated iPlayer, which didn’t even appear since the region of my account was checked. I setup a UK based LiveID and the iPlayer appeared. In fact, setting up a new account was the official solution mentioned by a member of the LiveID team on a forum. Not a good solution, especially since I have lots of links setup through my current LiveId.

I worried how this was going to work with Windows 8, given that I now login with my LiveID account (to enable seamless sync between my desktop and laptop). My worries seemed to be surfacing when the music app couldn’t login; it’s an XBox app and uses the same ID system checks, telling me that I needed to set my Windows region to the US before I could use it.

Now though, it seems that Microsoft allow account migration between regions, as mentioned in an Xbox forum post. I’ve just been through the live chat process with support and the migration request has been submitted. The only issue I had was that my original account needed a valid US address and phone number, but luckily I have friends that helped on that (thanks Kendall). How long it’ll take I’ve no idea; I have no licensing or payment issues to worry about, so there shouldn’t be any problems, but I’m really glad that this is possible now. It’s been a problem for far too long.