I have been using WP happily since the Lumia 710, and have just recently updated to 8.1 GDR1. Everything was working fine until today evening when my Lumia 920 would hard freeze at the lockscreen. Nothing would work. Had to force restart with Vol Down + Power. Anyway, the phone restarted and would freeze immediately upon my entering the pin fourth digit. I repeated this force restart about 5 times when it finally restarted okay.
Immediately, I notice something is not right. I have about 8 apps in the app list with blank icons and wrong names:
@{19002luk3ja.PrettyCo...
@{Microsoft.BingTransla...
@{Microsoft.MSBatteryS...
...
@{Microsoft.MSPodcast
Most of these apps are from Microsoft. Ironically, Microsoft's own Diagnostics app is also in the list as @{Microsoft.MSDiagnos... None of these apps would run. I click on these and the button would be depressed but won't run. So I decided to uninstall Diagnostics and reinstall form the app store hoping it would work. NOPE. In fact, it was reinstalled as @{Microsoft.MSdiagnos... and you can see "new" underneath it. Kinda funny. On the homescreen, launching the Outlook app crashes immediately. I also have the Calendar app pinned but it won't launch when tapped. I can see the normal "Calendar" tile is now replaced with @{Microsoft.MSCalendar_1.0... (I think the last digit is 0 since it gets cut off). So basically most apps from MS stop working by crashing or not responding to the launch tap.
I tried to take screenshots but it failed every time with an error "Couldn't take screenshots. I have never seen that before, and it worked fine the day before the hard freezes.
The app list also have a few other apps that have blank icons. Icons that are blank won't run. And then there are apps that have normal icons but won't run either like Skype and OneDrive. Basically, my phone is toast and the only solution is backup, factory reset, and restore.
Well, backup failed spectacularly.
I went into Settings > backup and started "backup now". It failed consistently at 95-98%. I spent an hour finding ways and someone from wpcentral forum mentioned to delete the existing backup from OneDrive. It was last backed up about 1 week ago, pretty recent, but I wanted more recent since I had made lots of changes to the phone within the last week. I decided to delete the existing backup. Restarted. Tried backing up again. NOPE. Failed again every time.
Alright, let's now try the Windows Phone app backing up. I first tried using the Windows Phone app for Desktop, and it's a POORLY designed program especially coming from MS for its on WP. I am pretty pissed by now since I just want a "one-click" button to backup all of the data on the phone. I would have been happy if that single button backup my photos, music and settings (don't really need the apps, games, or app data). Anyway, no such button exist. Okay, well, I just now go into photos and music individually and backup. Sounds good. Except the program doesn't have a "select all" button. Really? I couldn't use the normal shift+select to select multiple items since the program only puts a checkmark on the checkbox that mouse clicks on. I had to freaking google to know that I can do a CTRL+A and then SPACEBAR to put a checkmark in all the checkbox. Ridiculous. I then decided maybe the Windows Phone App for Metro is better.
I downloaded Windows Phone App from the Store and started the program hoping again that it has a "one-click" backup button. NOPE. Not there. Essentially it's almost 11 PM and I have just started backing up my Photos. It has taken about 20 minutes copying 704 of 1272 items (there're a few large videos in the mix).
Next up: Reset and start over...
But this experience has been quite disappointing considering that WP has at least 3-4 years to make it work, but the SINGLE, ONE TIME that I needed to use, it failed. To make matters worst, the Windows Phone app took 80-85% of the laptop dual-core CPU usage. It have not cursed so much inside while typing this post on the laptop and backing up. This laptop has a 256 GB SSD, but the high CPU usage renders everything into slow-mo.
Immediately, I notice something is not right. I have about 8 apps in the app list with blank icons and wrong names:
@{19002luk3ja.PrettyCo...
@{Microsoft.BingTransla...
@{Microsoft.MSBatteryS...
...
@{Microsoft.MSPodcast
Most of these apps are from Microsoft. Ironically, Microsoft's own Diagnostics app is also in the list as @{Microsoft.MSDiagnos... None of these apps would run. I click on these and the button would be depressed but won't run. So I decided to uninstall Diagnostics and reinstall form the app store hoping it would work. NOPE. In fact, it was reinstalled as @{Microsoft.MSdiagnos... and you can see "new" underneath it. Kinda funny. On the homescreen, launching the Outlook app crashes immediately. I also have the Calendar app pinned but it won't launch when tapped. I can see the normal "Calendar" tile is now replaced with @{Microsoft.MSCalendar_1.0... (I think the last digit is 0 since it gets cut off). So basically most apps from MS stop working by crashing or not responding to the launch tap.
I tried to take screenshots but it failed every time with an error "Couldn't take screenshots. I have never seen that before, and it worked fine the day before the hard freezes.
The app list also have a few other apps that have blank icons. Icons that are blank won't run. And then there are apps that have normal icons but won't run either like Skype and OneDrive. Basically, my phone is toast and the only solution is backup, factory reset, and restore.
Well, backup failed spectacularly.
I went into Settings > backup and started "backup now". It failed consistently at 95-98%. I spent an hour finding ways and someone from wpcentral forum mentioned to delete the existing backup from OneDrive. It was last backed up about 1 week ago, pretty recent, but I wanted more recent since I had made lots of changes to the phone within the last week. I decided to delete the existing backup. Restarted. Tried backing up again. NOPE. Failed again every time.
Alright, let's now try the Windows Phone app backing up. I first tried using the Windows Phone app for Desktop, and it's a POORLY designed program especially coming from MS for its on WP. I am pretty pissed by now since I just want a "one-click" button to backup all of the data on the phone. I would have been happy if that single button backup my photos, music and settings (don't really need the apps, games, or app data). Anyway, no such button exist. Okay, well, I just now go into photos and music individually and backup. Sounds good. Except the program doesn't have a "select all" button. Really? I couldn't use the normal shift+select to select multiple items since the program only puts a checkmark on the checkbox that mouse clicks on. I had to freaking google to know that I can do a CTRL+A and then SPACEBAR to put a checkmark in all the checkbox. Ridiculous. I then decided maybe the Windows Phone App for Metro is better.
I downloaded Windows Phone App from the Store and started the program hoping again that it has a "one-click" backup button. NOPE. Not there. Essentially it's almost 11 PM and I have just started backing up my Photos. It has taken about 20 minutes copying 704 of 1272 items (there're a few large videos in the mix).
Next up: Reset and start over...
But this experience has been quite disappointing considering that WP has at least 3-4 years to make it work, but the SINGLE, ONE TIME that I needed to use, it failed. To make matters worst, the Windows Phone app took 80-85% of the laptop dual-core CPU usage. It have not cursed so much inside while typing this post on the laptop and backing up. This laptop has a 256 GB SSD, but the high CPU usage renders everything into slow-mo.
Last edited:
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