Phone is no longer compatible with previously-installed apps after reset.

[Murgatroyd7]

I tried giving Windows 10 Mobile a fair chance, but it felt sluggish and I didn't like the interface, so I decided to revert back to Windows Phone 8.1 on my Lumia 1520 with Windows Device Recovery Tool. Although I backed up everything, I was missing about 40 apps/games, which I guess wasn't too surprising. What I find odd, though, is that my phone will no longer recognize the apps that are installed on my SD card. It knows something is there, but they are listed under "Other" in Storage Sense. When I try to set my phone to install new downloads to the SD card, it tells me that I have to first let it remove all installed apps because they belong to a different phone (even though the phone hasn't changed).

If I try manually re-downloading my missing apps (through the web site because they don't show up in the phone's store), I am unable to do so because my phone is apparently no longer compatible with them even though they are supposed to work with Windows Phone 8.1 according to the System Requirements. An example of one such app: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=b2a52ec0-7934-4ea9-a539-693ca7f029c0

At this point, I don't really know what to try. I don't want to completely lose access to all of these apps/games that I use, especially the ones I have paid for. For what it's worth, my OS version number is 8.10.14219.341. I can't update beyond that without going back to Windows 10 Mobile.

If you have any suggestions, I'd really appreciate it. I tried asking this on the official Microsoft support forum, but all they said is that it's normal to have to reinstall apps after resetting...which doesn't address my issue in any way.

 

[ashram]

Various issues.... some apps may have been updated to a newer version that isn't available on the older version of windows. Another being that maybe the app didn't correctly update the info in the store, improperly showing that 8.1 is still compatible. Also, apps can be set per device/carrier/region.

All I can suggest is copying what you want from the card (pics, music, etc), then formatting it . You should be able to set the SD card for app installs again. As for the apps that will not allow you to install again at all.....you may be out of luck there.

 

[Murgatroyd7]

Oops, I didn't realize I wasn't logged in when I made my post.

Anyway, thanks for the response. I had wondered if that could be the case, but it seems odd to me that some of these are apps that I have download/re-downloaded in just the last few days like Shark Dash and QuizUp. There are also a lot of apps that I was able to re-install just fine but the store still says that my device is not compatible with them. AppDeals and Baconit are two examples of this.

Almost all of my apps were stored on the SD card, so I'm currently hesitant to re-format it just in case there might be some possible chance that I'll somehow be able to access them again. I've reset my phone a handful of times and this is the first time I have ever run into an issue with it thinking that my SD card belongs to another phone. I don't know if I'm not using the correct version of 8.1 (I wish I would've written it down first) or if 10 changed something in my phone to make it "register" as a different device.

Something else that may be worth noting is that after updating, I was no longer able to connect to my phone through my computer. Windows 7 was saying that the RM-940 driver couldn't be properly installed. This was fixed by uninstalling the existing driver and scanning for hardware changes.

 

[Murgatroyd7]

Quick update: I tried resetting my phone again and re-gained access to a couple of apps, but lost access to a couple of others. On top of that, the Podcasts app would no longer open and I couldn't get any third-party podcast apps to work properly (they loaded but never returned any results). I have reset my phone two more times since then and Podcasts is working again. I also re-gained a couple more apps. There are still a lot showing as incompatible, though. Many of them are available for my wife's 8.1 phone (and they haven't been updated in several months), so I don't really know what to make of it. I'm guessing there isn't really anything that can be done at this point, however, so I suppose I'll just give up on looking for a solution.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Quick update: I tried resetting my phone again and re-gained access to a couple of apps, but lost access to a couple of others. On top of that, the Podcasts app would no longer open and I couldn't get any third-party podcast apps to work properly (they loaded but never returned any results). I have reset my phone two more times since then and Podcasts is working again. I also re-gained a couple more apps. There are still a lot showing as incompatible, though. Many of them are available for my wife's 8.1 phone (and they haven't been updated in several months), so I don't really know what to make of it. I'm guessing there isn't really anything that can be done at this point, however, so I suppose I'll just give up on looking for a solution.

try to format the sd card and then try installing the apps from downloads history

 

[Murgatroyd7]

Thanks for the suggestion, but my download history only shows what I have downloaded since resetting my phone. I can see pretty much everything by viewing my purchase history on the Microsoft web site, but there aren't any download options on there that I can see.

 

[speccy]

Did you definitely set up the phone with the same Microsoft account that you had used previously? I assume you must have to have been able to restore a backup... Can't think of anything else.

 

[Murgatroyd7]

Yes, I definitely did. It's the same one I've been using since getting an Xbox 360 years go and upon loading the backup, it restores most of my settings and apps. Just, you know, not those 40-ish that I can apparently no longer use. The only thing I can think of is that maybe I'm not using the exact same OS or firmware version that I had before resetting. Unfortunately, I didn't think to write either of those down because I didn't foresee this being an issue. I figured I might lose access to de-listed apps/games, but not ones that are still available in the store.

 

[speccy]

Your experience is slightly odd, I recently used WDRT to return my L950 to a production build of Win10M (it had been on an RS2 build), and after updating and restoring a backup, even things like "Bejeweled Live +" automatically re-installed and still works, and that is seriously ancient, I think I even had that on "Windows Phone 7".
I've never used an SD card on any Windows phone, might be relevant...