Why am I getting the error message Problem backing up your settings- Windows Phone 8.1?

[Windows Central Question]

Problem backing up your settings - Windows Phone 8.1

When I try to manually backup my phone it reaches the end and tells me "There was a problem backing up your settings. Please try again later."

I've tried deleting my old backup and plugging it into a power source, neither of which have worked.

A lot of people seem to have this issue and I haven't been able to find a suitable fix.

After I've deleted my backup and retried the backup again, it says that I have a backup of 35Mb. I'm not sure if this is the whole backup or just a small part of it since it seems a bit small for a phone I've had for 2 years.

Help really appreciated, thanks

 

[gpobernardo]

Re: Problem backing up your settings - Windows Phone 8.1

Around the same size is indicated in my L535, and I have not encountered any backup error so it seems to be a complete set of backup information - this is different from actually having the actual app files uploaded, which would take a lot more space.

Since you've tried the first solution (deleting the old backup and retrying), you may want to check and ensure that you've got a stable internet connection before retrying the backup process.

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[Max E]

Thanks for the reply.
I've tried doing the backup near my router which gives me 30 download and 10 upload so I don't think this is an issue with my internet.

 

[gpobernardo]

Here's some updated findings. I've just tried backing up my L535 in preparation to giving it to my sister. At first I encountered an error even if I was able to successfully back it up last Friday. I deleted the previous backup and still encountered an error. However, since I was doing something else, I just tried again. I think it failed at least two more times before it started the back up process...which lasted around two hours.

So, there. Try to start the backup process again if it fails. Around five attempts should be sufficient.

And welcome to Windows Central.:smile:

 

[neo158]

This is an old issue that dates back to WP8. You need to delete previous backups from OneDrive and wait for the changes to sync, usually about 20-30 mins, then try again.