Unable to create/login into Microsoft account on WP 8.1 on Lumia 720?

[P V]

Hi,

I have recently upgraded my Lumia 720 to WP 8.1 and as part of the upgrade all my email inboxes (Exchange, yahoo, gmail and hotmail) were removed.

After the upgrade, i was able to create exchange, yahoo and gmail inboxes successfully and i am able to send/receive mails through these email accounts but I am unable to create hotmail (or outlook as it is called now) inbox.

Whenever i go to settings->email+accounts->add an account->Microsoft account to create an hotmail account, it does nothing! I keep touching it in anticipation that i will ask for login/password details but it just keeps blinking everytime i touch it but does nothing!

Please note that I am based out of India and wanted to try out Cortana so i changed my region/language to US but reverted back the region/language to India. As part of this adventure, I ran into the issue where my gmail inbox stopped synchronizing and that was because of incorrect date/time setting (happened as Cortana was enabled and disabled).

I didn't have Developer review installed earlier.

Please guide/give me some pointers to investigate/resolve this problem.

Thank you!

PV