How to Reset Window Phone : Basic

Technical Level : Basic

Summary

This wiki article walks you through the various ways of resetting your Windows Phone, the difference between the methods and in which situations they should be used.

Details

There are two different types of resets for your Windows Phone. Soft reset and hard reset (a.k.a. factory reset). There is a big difference between the two: The hard reset will return your phone to factory settings while the soft reset is more like an extended reboot.

Soft Reset

The soft reset is the same thing as pulling your battery (on devices where that is possible). This method will not remove anything at all from your phone and is completely safe to attempt in any problem situation.

You perform the soft reset by having your phone turned on. Then press and hold the volume down + powerbuttons until your phone vibrates and restarts. Note that you should not touch the device screen during the process (not even when the 'slide down to power off' prompt appears).

Example of situations where the soft reset should solve the problem:

• An app that usually starts won't start
• The camera won't open
• The device starts using too much battery
• The device starts behaving oddly

Hard Reset

The hard reset will bring your phone back to factory settings, the same state as when the device was first turned on. All apps, messages, media, personal settings, etc will be removed from the phone. If backup is turned on under Settings, you can restore your apps and settings after performing a hard reset (as long as you initialize the phone with the same Microsoft Account). Note that resetting your device will not remove any OS or firmware updates. You will remain on the same version of Windows Phone after the reset.

If you can turn on your device you can reset your phone under Settings: Settings > about > reset your phoneThis procedure is described in more detailed in this official how-to article.

For HTC users:

If you can't open your device because of a forgotten PIN (or similar), you can use the button method: Turn off your phone, press and hold the volume down button and then briefly press the power button to turn the phone on. Keep the volume down button pressed until an exclamation mark is shown on your screen. Then press the following buttons, one at a time, in this order:

volume up, volume down, power, volume down

The phone will now reset to factory status.

For Nokia Lumia users:

If you can't open your device because of a forgotten PIN (or similar), you can use the button method: Press and hold the power-, volume-down- and camera buttons until the phone vibrates. Then release the power-button and keep the other two buttons pressed for another five seconds. The phone should reset to factory settings.

The hard reset operation will take a while to complete and will show spinning gears before it reboots your device to factory settings. Usually it will finish within 30 minutes but can, in some rare cases, take up to a couple of hours. Some Nokia Lumia handsets have a bug where a reset never seems to finish. If that should happen to you, check thiswiki article for a solution.

Example of situations where the hard reset should be used:

• The soft reset didn't solve the problem
• You want to switch to another Microsoft Account
• You want to reset a device that you will no longer use (this enables someone else to initialize the device with their own Microsoft Account)
• You want to restore a backup