Backup always fails

[JediTWang]

Works for me, Aussie L1020 + Finnish CV fw (i.e. unbranded/unlocked).
But there's still lots of unanswered Qns below if folks can help?

I don't see any issue, but where does one manually initiate a back-up for everything?
It seems possible to do it within "apps+settings", but not in "text messages" or "photos+videos".
Unless that manual back-up in "apps+settings" is the manual back-up for everything?

*UPDATE*
Okay so it's remaining paused @96% for me too, but only for "apps+settings" (unless that section backs-up everything?)
Well that's lame, hopefully automatic back-ups aren't routinely failing & it's only related to manual back-ups!?

*UPDATE*2
Okay it seems like it may've completed successfully, still, it's a bit "laggy", hopefully it's improved.
How do we verify that it has backed-up 100% correctly?

"That backup screen tells you when the last backup was done. Mine is telling me two weeks ago "

Hmm, that's a little too infrequent. More importantly, how do we verify a 100% successful bu?
Do we do that by doing a factory/hard-reset, restoring the bu, & then checking that everything's as we recall?
Surely there's a better approach than that...

Thank-you!

Mine still always fails 96%.
It's the only bug I have with DP...

IIRC someone claimed that the 1st time you do a manual BU it works, but after that it doesn't, I don't have my L1020 for about 1wk so I can't test that.
Anyway, none of this proves that the automated BU's don't work (they're too infrequent for my liking), just that the manual ones do not (or appear to not) for some folks.

 

[dby2011]

Been troubleshooting the last few few days and still can't get it to work

 

[dby2011]

Any suggestions?

 

[dby2011]

Not sure what happened, but my backups are working now. Wonder if it was a change on Microsoft's end. However, Tapatalk was updated yesterday and now it worked, maybe it was related to that?

 

[anon(123856)]

A user named SwimSwim had been getting this issue as well, and recommended deleting the backup that was stored and manually backup up. I deleted my backup, started a manual synch, but got the same error message. However, I saw on the "manage backups" page that the same amount of space that had been used before on OneDrive was again there. I turned my WiFi back on (I had been keeping it off due to the WiFi-reboot issue many have been experiencing), tried a manual backup, and it went through! "Last backed up 5 minutes ago"

Now this isn't anything certain, so don't delete your backup unless you're sure you want to try this, but it did work for me. Thank you SwimSwim!

Thanks! This worked for me. The weird thing was that it took three times as long like it was doing a "full" backup vs an "incremental" backup. But,hey, it worked!

 

[lumia720]

I have a Lumia 720 that runs the latest build of Windows Phone 8.1. Lately, I've been facing battery problems after the recent WhatsApp update. I want to do a hard reset to fix the problem. Now the problem is the backup.

Whenever I ask the phone to backup apps+settings to the cloud, I immediately get an error that says:
"There was a problem backing up your settings. Please try again later."

Now I'm stuck with a phone that sometimes doesn't even get through the day with no way to restore my settings after a hard reset.

And when I go to Manage Backups, it shows me grayed out options of Settings and Apps list occupying 0 bytes. So no option to delete them either.

Any suggestions?

 

[CityBoyAtHeart]

Exact same issue here. No help from Microsoft so far. Anyone have a fix without a reset and losing everything?

 

[MartLea]

Yes same error here after swapping sim. Phone shows new (temporary) sim phone number even though my old phone number has been successfully ported to the new sim. Windows account shows my original and current phone number. Updating the number on Windows account made no difference, backup always fails with above error.
Would be great if MS could advise.

Well it seems there is no way to edit the Sim Card phone number in Windows Phone - a feature that has been around in mobiles for years! This is important as many apps need to read/check/confirm sim card phone number with actual phone number in use. Only option therefore is to either get new card from service provider and get them to ensure it has current number on it or go to a phone shop and use their sim card editor. Meanwhile after following all the tips here (except the drastic total reset/reinstall) manual backups still fail. Great when only solutions seem to be re-installing!

 

[Rajesh Kothari]

Remove the old backup using 'manage backups' and 'delete'. Now run 'backup now' It worked for me on latest 8.1 Dev Edition on Lumia 720.

 

[Rajesh Kothari]

One can delete the phone backup by going to One Drive on a PC. I go via my outlook.com mail account. Click on downarrow next to outlook.com on topline and click on 'OneDrive'..

Go to Settings - Options - Device backup. You will find your Lumia Phone backup there. Click on 'Delete' button next to it.

 

[Jason Timmins]

I just deleted the existing, pre-WP81 backup using the handset and the new backup ran OK. It took a while though.

 

[Will6371]

I just deleted the existing, pre-WP81 backup using the handset and the new backup ran OK. It took a while though.

It take longer because it is backing up a lot more stuff, like app data and screen.

 

[PepperdotNet]

This is driving me absolutely bonkers. I have done all the suggested fixes, deleted the backup in OneDrive, still it fails the backup.

I discovered last night that the backup was faulty, when I reset my phone to factory settings in hopes of solving the limited WiFi every day bug. The backup restored, sort of. The home screen looked ok, but then I discovered that anything that is an "app" instead of built-in was as if I had never touched it before. Like the App Folders, which were on the start screen until I touched them, then they disappeared and it said, helpfully, that I have no groups and wouldn't I like to create some. Most heartbreaking of all was the several months worth of progress through Angry Birds Go that has been vaporized. It's enough for me to say to hell with all the games and get rid of them all. Finally, after I got things somewhat back to normal, the WiFi still behaves the same.

I came to WP from iPhone, so I find it quite disturbing that as awful a steaming pile iTunes is, there's one thing it does flawlessly: backup and restore everything on a device so that there is no functional difference before and after. Why is there not a reliable way to do this on WP?

Maybe if I wipe the device, don't restore a backup, and set it up from square one all over again, maybe it just might deign to allow a backup to succeed? But if I understand correctly how it works, that backup, even if successful, will never contain app data unless the app developer specifically provided for it.

EDIT: NO! Even after wiping the device and setting up new, with a new name for the backup that never existed in my OneDrive account before. It *still* goes to 99% and then fails.

 

[Will6371]

Only a few people have a problem with backups, I never had a problem with it myself.

 

[Will6371]

How are you deleting the backups? You should be doing it by going to settings, backup, apps+settings, manage backups and delete.

 

[PepperdotNet]

That's how I did it, also check with web browser on OneDrive.com in settings, device backups and delete it from there if it remains.

 

[Joe920]

Just went through this with my 1520 on WP8.1 DP. It wouldn't complete a backup, getting stuck at 95% and then failing. I hope MS gets error logs from these because this is one nasty bug..

Deleting the backup is a bit scary obviously, because if that doesn't fix it and the only remaining solution is a device reset, you now have lost all your settings! Took the plunge anyway, and lo and behold, after getting stuck for a minute or so on 97%, it completed the backup. So another point of feedback is that the progress bar is not proportional to time at all.

Also not a of fan of the 'manage backups' UI. Wouldn't it make sense to show a list of actual device backups with dates and names? I should still have a 1020 backup, and I'd like to be able to see that I'm keeping that one. At this point I'm just hoping that I didn't also kill that backup.

 

[MikeSo]

A user named SwimSwim had been getting this issue as well, and recommended deleting the backup that was stored and manually backup up. I deleted my backup, started a manual synch, but got the same error message. However, I saw on the "manage backups" page that the same amount of space that had been used before on OneDrive was again there. I turned my WiFi back on (I had been keeping it off due to the WiFi-reboot issue many have been experiencing), tried a manual backup, and it went through! "Last backed up 5 minutes ago"

Now this isn't anything certain, so don't delete your backup unless you're sure you want to try this, but it did work for me. Thank you SwimSwim!

Thanks for this! My backup had been failing for 2 months... finally got it to work by deleting the old backup first.

 

[StephanW]

Try deleting old backups?

Edit: Not seen the 6 pages ...

Also I've to say/ask: Should WP backup automatically?

 

[MikeSo]

Should WP backup automatically?

I think it does, actually. Well, except when it's failing, apparently... I know when I switched phones, there were backups from my previous phone available without me having done anything manually.