Microsoft is investigating Windows Phone 8 reboot and sync issues

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,294   +192
Staff member

Update (11/28): Microsoft has acknowledged a random rebooting issue on Windows Phone 8 and has promised an over-the-air fix during December. It's yet unclear what's the source of the reboots and so far no clear pattern (or third party app) has been identified as such. Opinions around the web from WP8 phone owners seem mixed between those that have at least suffered once from this problem and others that are pretty vocal about the OS, saying their phones are rock solid and performing up to expectations.

Original story is below -- as reported on November 21:

Multiple people are reporting problems with their brand new Windows Phone 8 devices. The two key issues seem to be email-sync problems and random phone reboots that are reportedly happening regardless of carrier choice, according to Mary Jo Foley from ZDNet.

Foley said she hadn’t had any problems with her loaner HTC 8X until just the other day. The email client and Microsoft Account on the handset somehow went into an endless loop of trying to resync and the phone even spontaneously rebooted one morning.

A quick visit to Microsoft’s support forums as well as the WPCentral forums revealed that other users were having similar issues. Some said that removing the Skype for Windows Phone 8 app would resolve the rebooting issue. It may or may not have helped but Foley still had to wipe and restore the smartphone to fix the resync problem.

The editor reached out to Microsoft about the issues and was told officially that the company is investigating reports of these incidents, leading one to conclude that it’s not an isolated event. Skype conveniently had no comment on the issue, instead suggesting she direct all inquiries about it directly to Microsoft’s Windows Phone team.

Keep in mind that this is only one person’s account with a single handset but there are others complaining of similar problems. In fact, these same people were voicing concerns even before the Skype app was available so it’s entirely possible that the app has nothing to do with it. We’ll keep a close eye on this and update if anything more comes of it.

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One wld be foolish to own a Windows * Phone.....M$oft dumps their products and run to another without any regards for their customers. History doesn't lie. Big mistake to go M$oft , Nokia....Big mistake.
 
One wld be foolish to own a Windows * Phone.....M$oft dumps their products and run to another without any regards for their customers. History doesn't lie. Big mistake to go M$oft , Nokia....Big mistake.
Must... not... feed... troll...
 
It seems all these reboots have one thing in common, the Microsoft Windows Phone 8 OS!
 
Got my HTC8X and Lumia920 for my hubby since last week, no reboot no issues, all seems doing well with 50+ apps installed on both phones.
 
I bought the 920 at launch. I have 50 so apps and games and have not experianced any rebooting or sync issues. I don't feel this problem is nearly as wide spread as people make it out to be and that most of it is trolling. Most of these articles started to appear on apple sites first and iOS users jump at the chance to shout,"SEE, THE IPHONE'S BETTER." Android users can't complain that much. Unless you have a flagship phone with tons of support, you're almost guaranteed to have these problems, especially people who buy sketchy apps. I'd have to say rooting android phones is the single most common phone repair I've done on any phone. I paid for my ramen noodles in college by fixing broken phones for people or them giving me their broken phone, I fix it, then sell it. Now, don't get me wrong, I love android. The SGS III was my first choice from my LG quantum windows phone until I caught wind of the 920. I just think it is for the experianced user and tinkerers. I think this is also getting a lot of attention because windows phone 8 just came out.

anon, reporting in
 
I don't think they are trolling. I love windows 8 -- it does lack apps -- but I can wait as the desktop mode is fine and the apps can be beautiful like the NYT app. I got the lumia 920 loved it for the first week. Suddenly email is not working visual voicemail is not working. I don't mind if espn doesn't update I can be patient with that. But email and voicemail not operating properly is unacceptable. I am going to try to wait as long as possible for a fix -- but this is not a problem I can live with for say 1 month.
 
This happned to me over the past few days. I thought it was due to large skydrive uploads, but the Skype thing makes sense also. I have uninstalled skype and hoping for the best. My phone becomes extremely unreliable text messages, emails, facebook will not sync or post. Apps crash often also.

I have a 920 bought on day one, love the phone, can't do my job with this issue though.
 
My old Samsung Focus had weekly resets. I haven't experienced anything on my 920, yet.
 
I have the Lumia 920 and I have not had any reboot or sync issues. I have, however, had a more serious problem pop-up which is getting no press coverage that I've seen. Yesterday, I went into my options area of my phone and began the factory reset process. Well this process bricked my phone. Yes, bricked! I did some research and it turns out this problem is happening on both the HTC 8X and the Lumia phones. Fortunately, I was able to find a site that walked me through steps to fix it. It required downloading two Nokia programs, downloading about 1GB of firmware files, and going through a complicated process to re-flash the phone. You may ask, why did you do a factory reset to begin with? Well, because it's a REQUIREMENT if I change my Microsoft account email address. This is so dumb.
 
I have the 920 and I know three other people with a windows phone. They all have the HTC 8x seeing as how the 920 is sold out everywhere. None of them have had this problem, at least to my knowledge. I suppose the guest a few posts above is correct. This may be getting a lot of attention just because it's so new. To anyone having this problem, I'm sorry you have it and that it gets resolved quickly. I'm just surprised that none of the review sites who got this before launch had this problem. I really enjoy windows phone and hope others can too
 
I can't speak about WP8, but WP7.5 has zero issues for me. My Samsung Focus S has never reset nor had any other crippling error.
 
Hahaha you sound like an I-Sheep

Nahh, Nokia Lumia 920 is the best phone out!

Anybody who says otherwise is just being cute haha.
 
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