Backup always fails

[CSJr1]

Don't know if this helps anyone, but I was in the same boat. Got to 97% then failed.

I tried:
1. Turning off text back ups.
2. Deleting old backup files.
3. Switching between cellular/wifi
4. Multiple resets
5. Deleting some apps
6. Deleted my work in progress developer app.
7. Removing a Live tile that was no longer supported in 8.1 ( Nokia City Lens)
8. Deleting multiple texts with mms/long feeds
9. Changing lock image to a generic photo.

What finally worked was turning off parralaax effect for the tile images. I just set it to normal accent color. ( This try I also set the lock image to regular bing image, but I am not sure it was required)

 

[crav4speed]

This has been happening to me lately as well. I deleted the old backup and then tried a manual backup but it always says that it failed. Although, when I log into OneDrive, it shows that a new backup was saved but is 0 MB. Tried everything suggested in this thread to no avail.

 

[Link Kadeshi]

Something I noticed recently, after deleting the backup, doing a soft reset and backing up, it succeeded. Well, the new Live Lockscreen BETA apparently borked my backup again. I set it to a picture, or (Better yet) Bing, and it backed right up again. Food for thought. Had this issue for far too long until I just tried deleting the backup. Blargh. Backups should be easy.

 

[crav4speed]

Well, the new Live Lockscreen BETA apparently borked my backup again. I set it to a picture, or (Better yet) Bing, and it backed right up again.

That worked! Thank you.

I changed the lockscreen to bing and did a soft reset and the backup worked. Now I can downgrade to 8.0 so that I can upgrade to 8.1+Cyan. Microsoft - what a love/hate relationship this is turning out to be...

 

[Bobby Bahmanpour]

I had the same issue before doing the upgrade, deleting the old back up did work for me. Still lost some stuff but mostly it's back to what it was, I didn't get my Password data and some pics under picture lock.

NOW on 8.1 and Cyan I am back to having issues and it gets stuck at 29% and then it shows a backup of 9.07MB but I am not sure what's backed up. I know I got all my text messages back after the upgrade but It's not fun having to constantly try to figure things out on Windows.... That's the only thing I miss about IPhone... that didn't have a lot of issues. BUT I do love the Lumia 1520 and the new 8.1.... hoping the GDR1 will fix all the issues.

UPDATE: It JUST worked for me, after letting sit for about 30 minutes, it slowly went to the very end and now I have a 199MB backup and says last back up 2 minutes ago.
This has to be a problem with ONEDRIVE and not the phone itself.

 

[Ben Hanchett]

I have been having problems as well. I deleted my backup from a month ago and trying a to backup now. 199MB backup sounds massive! My backup from a month ago was only 85MB

Update: Just tried to backup, once again failed. Now it says The server connection was lost and the backup failed. Where do you find your backup in Onedrive because I've never seen it.

 

[Link Kadeshi]

I had a server connection error once when I let the screen shut down, and it must have disconnected from my network (Even if for a moment). Now, this might have been a pure coincidence, and it might be too time intensive for some, but try keeping the screen up and see if that helps any. It will run in the background, but all it take is flicking the screen, or just tapping on anything that isn't a cancel button.

 

[ivkec]

Same here...Uninstall any app that might replace your lock screen. My issue was caused by Live Lock Screen app from Microsoft - after uninstalling, my phone backed up successfully.

 

[MrGoodSmith]

I was having the same problem on WP8.1 DP, getting the message "There was a problem backing up your settings. Try again later", always breaks the backup at around 96%. Deleted previous backups and now it's working properly. I guess I am ready to update to Cyan now.

 

[Thought1]

My 1520 started having screen problems (artifacts not clearing away when the screen changed, only slowly fading over time, so after about 15 minutes of use the screen was essentially unreadable), so I got a warranty replacement. I went to check on my backups before swapping the SIM, and I realized it said my last backup was in June, before my 8.1 upgrade. So I tried to do a "backup now" and it got to 96%, waited a while, then gave the "There was a problem backing up your settings. Try again later."

I went through this and several other threads around, and tried everything:

1. Changing lock screen from Weather to Bing.
2. Making sure I had the latest updates.
3. Soft reseting the phone
4. Trying to backup just Settings, not Apps.
5. Deleting old backups (which - HORROR - actually FAILED with the message "There was a problem deleting your backups. Try again later.")
6. Looking in my OneDrive (didn't find any backups nor backup directories)
7. (Several other things over the last couple of hours that I can't recall off-hand)

What finally appears to have done it is when I started going into every setting. When I went into Glance, it popped up a dialog that said, "You need to restart your phone to finish this update. (Restart Now) (Later)" I did a Restart Now, and when it came back up, backups suddenly started working again. Weird that all of the restarts I'd done since whatever update that was a part of didn't satisfy it, I had to actually go into Glance to trigger it.

The new phone is loading up right now, so we'll see if it worked...

 

[Thought1]

Okay, update: It worked. And everything even restored correctly, except for the couple apps that didn't use synchronized data (expected)!
Here's what I did:

1. Set up phone (Windows Phone 8) as normal, signing in to my Microsoft Account.
2. No backup option was offered, because I only had the 8.1 backup, so it loaded me into a clean system.
3. I upgraded the phone to 8.1
4. Once 8.1 was up and running correctly, I went into Settings -> About and selected the "Reset My Phone" button.
5. Once it finished resetting the device (to Windows Phone 8.1 setup this time), I logged in and it offered to restore my backup.

It's working like a charm now.

 

[boltman2013]

Mine was doing that too...deleted backups...no go
I finally just dumped a bunch of apps I wasn't using.... took a long time but finally got it to back up ...it took hours

 

[abhinavsaran]

Delete old backup and take backup again..........it worked for me

 

[vepac]

May I ask how do you make a backup?

 

[boltman2013]

settings...backup

Three areas...
Apps+settings...this is the BIG ONE that seems stuck for many with 8.1 DP
text messages
photo+videos

 

[Panagiotis Skordilis]

i try all the solutions from above i read and nothing working. mine stuck on 97% and then error.any possible solution guys?

 

[adrian1338]

I had the problem and I first recognized it after changing the region in order to enable cortana. changed the region back yesterday and It run through. strange enough while it failed my "manage backups" showed around 20mb on onedrive and today (with the bug not being able to update to GDR1 ) it shows me around 400mb used on onedrive. either something went wrong there or they also uploaded the install files for the GDR. at least it runs through though. Took ages with 400mb upload

 

[boltman2013]

GDR1 seems to have really improved backup speed, possibly because I fixed it prior?

 

[novaprime9]

When I was having this trouble, I found another thread elsewhere that said the cause could be something in the texts backups. To check, I turned text backups off, and forced a backup. It worked fine. So I then turned texts backups back on, and the next backup failed.

Spent the next hour or so weeding out some older MMS messages. No idea which one was the cause because I didn't test after every single deletion. In any case, I did eventually find the culprit because my backups go through without a hitch now.

 

[SpideyCoco]

I'm having this issue since this morning. Turns out my last update was 2 months ago, more or less before 8.1 DP was released if my memory is somewhat right. Let's bullet what I've done so far:

• Delete backups
• Disable text message backups
• Soft reset
• Updating all apps
• Revert lockscreen to Bing
• Disabling homescreen background
• Uninstalling some apps
• Disabling Apps Corner
• Manually syncing MSFT account with no problem

Yet the error is stuck in there. It goes all the way up to 100% to seem like it's finished only to show the error. However, after the error, the manage backups screen shows 40,92mb in backups, so I don't really know if it has fully performed the backup, partly or none at all and it's just dead space.