How much do you lose when you reset your Windows Phone?

[Windows Central Question]

So my 920 has been misbehaving for past few months. From time to time the performance gets sluggish, going to home screen might result in "Loading..." for 10-15 seconds. Applications hang and crash on startup... etc.
This is not happening all the time, the phone is still it pretty much usable state, but when it does it's frustrating.
So I think, what if I do a factory reset? In the old days, when Windows started to work slowly you reinstall it. Maybe I should do the same to the phone? =D
The only question is, how much stuff I will loose and will have to spend time restoring from backups after reset like that?
I assume the settings of apps are stored in the cloud, so just reinstalling them I should get it all back. Same with photos and videos - all that is on my onedrive. Contacts, mail, messages - all that should be in the cloud too, right?

Am I missing something? Anyone did something like that recently and can share experience?

 

[gpobernardo]

You will lose everything you've customized in your phone, but you will not lose anything associated with your account. Hence, after resetting your phone to factory defaults you should no longer see any of your files in your phone. But as soon as you use the same Microsoft account for that phone, everything associated with that account should be readily accessible.

You're right in enumerating what gets downloaded back into your phone (if enabled): photos, contacts, mail, most of your SMS, app settings (for supported apps or apps that have that feature) and custom settings. As for videos and music, haven't seen an auto-upload feature for those two.

There's one thing you'll lose though (I just remembered now): if you've linked accounts that span multiple contact accounts, you'll most probably lose some of those linked contacts especially those who have strange Facebook names (names that have nothing to do with their real name like "Awesome Jack" whose real name is Philip Stewart). So if you have linked a certain contact from your Twitter account to your Facebook account, that link may be lost - you can always relink your contacts anyway.

And yes, resetting a device to factory defaults is usually the last resort solution when all other attempts fail (such as restarting the phone and performing a soft reset).


BUT before you go forth an perform a factory reset, you may want to inspect your app list an uninstall certain apps that you no longer use regularly. It has been reported in a few threads here that the Discovery News app is causing that same issue for a Lumia 92x, so if you have that app you may want to uninstall it first and confirm if he's findings are correct. In addition to that app, having Kid's Corner and any of Microsoft's Beta Lock screen apps have also been reported to be related to that issue.

 

[eusty]

Just make sure that you have a recent back up (check it's on OneDrive ok). Restoring is actually very good as you don't lose much info at all.

Also check your photos are backed up to OneDrive as well.

After selecting the restore when you have reset it will recover most settings and start downloading your apps again.

I've been impressed with what it does after a hard reset, it's not that much of a hassle.

 

[gpobernardo]

I must add: be sure to check if all your photos are backed-up to OneDrive, and I mean ALL. Not sure if the L920 also has a duplicate higher resolution image just like the L1020 and L1520 does, but if it does chances are that those higher resolution photos are not automatically backed-up in OneDrive.

The easiest and safest back up you can do for all your non-app related data in your phone is to copy everything your can see in the folders in your to your PC (Photos, Videos, Documents, Ringtones, etc.). Once your phone has been reset, simply copy those folders back to your phone.

 

[Mike Fait]

I haven't seen an option to restore photos to your phone when doing a restore. The backup doesn't include photos, does it? The photos are backed up to Onedrive as you take them. That's a good idea to copy them to a PC via the USB.

 

[dao hong]

BTW, pls help me find out Glance. I cant tind it when i hard reset my phone, with build 10572 Extras section now only acess point and extras & info (