Over recent months, the Windows Phone I use for work (a Nokia Lumia 625) has become progressively more unreliable. Initially, there was just the odd random reboot which also reset the date and time to the out of the box values. Then, I found it was becoming unresponsive several times daily – and there was no pattern to it that would suggest any one application was at fault. The only fix was to hold the power button for at least 10 seconds, after which would perform a soft reset (needing the date and time to be set each time). On one occasion it even hung when I went straight from a reboot to the Date and Time settings without running any other apps!
After a call to our mobile operator’s service desk, I arranged a handset swap but that meant I needed to back up my phone. Windows Phone is pretty good in that regard, in that my configuration settings, applications, etc. are linked to my Microsoft account (depending on the Backup settings). Unfortunately though, the backup hadn’t run successfully for a month – which seemed to co-incide with the time I accidentally killed the DHCP server at home…
Does anyone know what Windows Phone 8.1 GDR1 is please? Astounded to read I’ll need an update to enable static IP: http://t.co/I0qvqapksb
— Mark Wilson (@markwilsonit) September 16, 2014
Windows Phone can’t be configured with static IP (at least not until the next release) so I tried backing up over 3G and 4G networks, and even using a neighbour’s Wi-Fi, but it kept failing. Googling was turning up posts about changing my lock screen image but that made no difference so I decided to build a new DHCP server to try and restore the configuration that had worked previously. Nope. No luck there either Eventually, I found a post that suggested checking the OneDrive app was authenticated. Sure enough, the app had updated and I needed to log in again. With OneDrive up and running, the Backup also jumped into life. Result. A day or so later, with the new handset delivered by courier, logging into my Microsoft account allowed the phone to be restored.
Let’s hope this handset is more reliable than the one it replaced #Nokia #Lumia 625 #WindowsPhone pic.twitter.com/6MWzE2ORA5 — Mark Wilson (@markwilsonit) October 13, 2014
I had to supply passwords for mail accounts, etc. and all of the apps need to be authenticated again but that’s not really a problem. Internet Sharing settings needed to be edited and the Bluetooth pairing with my car needed to be recreated too but by and large the configuration settings migrated to the new handset (as did all of my text messages and call history). I’m sure there will be other things I need to fix (and I lost the images on the first handset as they weren’t included in the backup) but at least my phone doesn’t keep rebooting!