Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrggghh!
Yesterday my phone, with no respect for the faith I have showed in it, collapsed. As I worked quietly away at my desk, it shut itself down, then got half way through starting itself back up before giving up.

The screen I actually saw was less useful than this.
Following 10 minutes or so of incredulous ranting, I gathered my thoughts and considered my options. I had one, really: a full reset and rebuild. At this point I was very grateful for the backup utilities I’ve been using.
Backup Tools For Windows Mobile
Microsoft have developed a rather excellent little mobile phone backup utility for WinMob phones. Microsoft My Phone is a free tool, capable of backing up your whole phone contents except software. I’d recommend it for all WinMob users, because it can even backup your music and photos, whether on the storage card or on the phone memory. It also keeps all your SMS & MMS messages, which can be an absolute boon if you need to keep records of some of your text conversations. If you don’t often take your personal files off the phone (which I do but you might not), this might be the only place you can find them if your phone gets nicked.
At work we run Exchange Server, so we use Activesync to make sure our phones are up to date with all emails; contacts; appointments; tasks and so on. Since the two tools are both Microsoft, they make sure they don’t rip on each others’ toes so duplicates are avoided.
Success!
Thanks to having already used these two utilities, I managed to repopulate my phone with all the information that was on it before it had a wobbly. Using the My Phone tool, I archived 2000 texts to the web, thus avoiding the memory problems that probably caused the meltdown in the first place.
Don’t Lose Your Software
A word to the wise…. if you install 3rd party software on your Windows Mobile device, keep the Registration Keys on record. If (when?) you have to rebuild the phone, the software will be lost along with all other data held on the handset. If you’re working from the storage card, that should be ok but don’t leave it to chance.
I’ve had to reinstall 2 pieces of software and have needed to punch in the Product Registration Keys for both of them. In the worst case, you might have to pay again to use something you’ve already paid for. Don’t get caught out.
Now What?
After an hour or so wasted rebuilding my little friend, I’ve calmed down a bit. I think I’m ready for the abusive comments from iPhone users now 😉
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