Suffering from the spinning cogs issue on a Nokia Windows Phone? There's a fix for that

We've already looked at the spinning cogs issue with Nokia Windows Phones. You reset (or update) your handset and the when booting the handset, you simply cannot get past the spinning cogs. Luckily, while Nokia has been busy replacing damaged hardware, the manufacturer has also released an update to its Nokia Software Updater that looks to address the problem.

When launching the downloaded executable, you're informed that an update has been applied to the suite (links to the Nokia suite can be found below). The new feature is the "dead phone recovery for WP8 devices that do not boot up correctly." This is the help you'll take advantage of, should your Nokia Windows Phone be spinning its cogs around the room.

So, how does one get started? It's actually rather straight forward:

Download the NSU (version 4.0.1 for retail). Install the suite to your favourite part of your PC (Windows 7 & 8 only).
Simply plug in your Windows Phone to the PC, fire up the software suite and choose "My device doesn't boot up."
Once the device connection screen shows up, press and hold the power + volume down buttons simultaneously until the phone vibrates.
The software will then detect your Lumia Windows Phone and prompt you to install 1.2GB worth of recovery goodness.

Once finished, should everything have gone to plan you should have a working Lumia Windows Phone 8 smartphone. It's a really neat way of attempting to get a fix into the hands of consumers. If you're still having issues after trying this out, or the process simply doesn't work, we strongly recommend you get in touch with Nokia.

It's also worth noting that we cannot take any responsibility if you "brick" your Windows Phone or cause a global blackout using the above steps. Traverse at your own risk, folks.

via: My Nokia Blog; cheers for the link, Andrew!

Rich Edmonds

Rich Edmonds is Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him over on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.

146 Comments

Ya sucks I would have to go through that to reset a phone.
Only if things go wrong, and since having problems with an update isn't unique to WP, maybe you should stick with feature phones until things are perfect enough for you.
No need to be sassy
Lol
Wait, I've had 3 iPhones and never once it took 1hr let alone 8 hrs to reset or update I think you should step off your fanboyism and stop making excuses for faulty processes. I've reset hundreds of bbs iPhones and galaxies for work, yes you got it. Never once I experienced something like this. Never experienced on wp7 either. While bricked resets aren't unique to wp8, you probably would see less frequency in other platforms. 3 separate wp8 devices that I've had took 6 and 8 hours. The last one just gave up and going to return This is quite the issue.
I hate to say it, but you are right.
I think he was just being an ass, don't feed the troll
You are lucky. Updating my iPhones always took a minimum of 3 hours, since all data was wiped in the process....luckily, I've only had the gears issue once with two updates on two separate phones. Lets not even get started on Android, assuming your manufacturer even values your business enough to provide an update (HTC One S, looking right at you, buddy!)
Sounds like you've been dealt a bad hand in life. Could be a lesson to learn about patience.
Unlucky? Or maybe I'm lucky? I have 4 different 920s and never had that problem
"4 different 920s"
You must be a member of the "1%" who own 80% of the wealth ;-)
Just att being nice letting me swap colors
Same here...
Quite right, thus is a major fu@%up.
You have to credit Nokia for releasing this bit of technical kit to the Users, though it would have been much better to make it available BEFORE releasing Amber. I lost my phone for a day, missed work calls and calls from my kids school about a health emergency. To say the least I am pretty pis$$ed off. Lost 2 hours out of my workday at an AT&T repair center getting a refurb, and making them update it before I would accept it. Then spent a day rebuilding the phone since I couldn't trust a backup made during the "Spinning Gears" failed update.
I feel like Nokia owes me for this mess. Big time. Dkp23 is right, this is subpar performance for a modern Smartphone. In the past Nokia has acknowledged and compensated Owners when they screwed up. We all know Microsoft has never done so, so I think we are looking at a new era of poor Customer Service that will diminish Nokia's reputation and significantly hurt the platform.
Nokia / Microsoft =same people.
You cannot be serious. Taking a day to rebuild your phone is absolutely ridiculous. Grow up. No one owes you anything. If your phone is that crucial where you have to be available all the time for emergencies I suggest you come up with a redundancy plan. Buy a cheap prepaid if you need one that bad OR use a land line. Customer service can't wipe your bum for you and if you feel that strongly about them "owing" you, switch platforms. Don't string it on
I assume you're one of those people who happily pays money for a service he/she then never receives.
Oh - wait. Those people don't exist, and everyone agrees that if you pay for something, the company/person you pay owes you for that thing. That's right.
Mate, where I come from you send your phone away and it takes at least THREE WEEKS to rebuild the phone, exercise some patience!!!
Never owned iPhone or Android. BlackBerry was my first smart phone, then went to WP7, and now 8. I have never had an update to brick my phone, let alone take more than an hour to update. Updating is usually a simple process, unless someone is trying to flash the update onto a phone that isn't supported, yet. The update doesn't work on all phones equally. MS puts out the update and manufacturers or carriers ensure they work with that particular device. I'm not saying that's what you did, but I can't imagine any update for any phone taking as long as you have mentioned. Now, the other issue could possibly have been bad storage in those phones, which would make it a device issue and not the update process.
Vmac71 - I never had a problem with updating or flashing on Windows Mobile, nor previously with Windows Phone. I my case, which is typical of the problems being experienced, the phone worked flawlessly prior to the Update. The reason the gears were spin ing sk long is that there are problems with the updating process which result in it getting stuck. Occasionally it will fix itself, sometimes one or more of the increasingly deep reset procedures may work. In my case, none worked. Not even a factory reset. Hence my device was replaced with a refurb. Nit too happy to have to take over someone else's problem device, but other than the yellow caste to the action bottoms its been solid so far.
This is bad enough, along with the lost $, time and being incommunicado. If my device was 81 days older, AT&T wouldn't have fixed it, and my only option would be to buy a new phone while waiting 2 weeks for Nokia to service my phone, at my expense, due to their bad update/update process. Imagine how excited I am now about WinPhone 8.1 - which AT&T will undoubtedly delay approving until the early adopters of the L920 are out of Warranty. This is very bad for an ecosystem struggling to gain traction.
I've had my brothers iPod brick after an update, as a matter of fact wasn't there a big issue with the prior version of IOS?
All products and software have one flaw in common. They were designed by humans :)

I've had 1 (Out of 7) Windows phones brick on me while resetting. (My whole family has windows phones, and I'm the tech support).

I can say I have never seen an iPhone brick on reset, or update ... I have seen one explode, but not brick.

The only 2 andriod phones we've had stopped working after 2 months, never had a chance to update or reset them.
You are right, you represent all iphone owners. You don't have a problem means all iphones have no problem updating firmware. \sarcasm. On the other hand, I have no problem with updating my 2 920 for all the updates. Does it mean that you are lying about your wp8 devices? Not at all because my experience does not represent everyone.
Wait, try HTC 8X.
That's funny. 4 iPhones here at work experienced update issues in some iOS6 updates (especially the recent ones) and finally that atrocious iOS7 update.
Meanwhile, my mother's 620 and my 820 never had a problem updating to Amber/GDR2.....
I actually experienced smoother updates on Android, assuming it does get an update. Else people just do it manually.
Step off your fanboyism and accept that, yes, this happens to ALL platforms. Frequency is relative since we don't have the complete data.
Im a wp fan but im on my fourth 920, white ATT, and everytime ive reset phone or updated ive had issues. Now, maybe ive been very unlucky but im not so sure. After doing initial amber update, nscreen was unresponsive so i did a phone reset and got the cogs....now after this update phone is fine, just charging battery to do update but phone is recovered. This needs to be in every carriers store that sells WP devices.
Very true. My wife and I have had 4 iphones from the 3G to the 5S. I got board with platform and gave the 920 a try. Big mistake! The hardware seems ok but the software is incredibly buggy. Anytime I had a problem, technical support would have to do a soft reset then a hard reset. I do not consider losing all of my data and having to reinstall all of my apps as resonable fix. The first phone I had bricked after 2 months. Now the replacement has bricked 9 months later. Looking at spinning cogs for a full day should be the new windows phone commercial.
Ha! WP7 DEVICES NEVER HAD THAT! WOOOOO!!! -Sent via WPCentral app on a Nokia Lumia 900
I have recovered numerous times from those gears now without the fancy software. Just hold the vol down and power button. When the phone reboots hit vol up, then down then power on Nokia screen. Try to do it twice before the gears appear. Then wait 5 minutes for the gears....and that's it.
Its worked for me just to take it to the at&t warranty center. They exchange no grief.. Get a brand spanking new phone with no dings or scratches lol
Just did this today...nice to have a brand new phone after 1 yr on my dinged up 920, but I hate to have to reinstall 200 apps. Oh well, I'm used to that from being a Windows fanboi :)
2000 apps? LMAO
200.
This, and all the other button press techniques ( there are at least 4 of them) only work for some cases. Many don't respond or respond only partially and the only fix is a replacement phone. And when you get it you can't count on the previous backup to be valid, as it may have been made during the failed upgrade and be corrupted. So count in a day to rebuild your phone. Also, make AT&T update the phone before accepting it. Their refurb stock are not updated to GDR2/Amber. And they won't compensate you for the loss of any protective skin, like ZAGG, you applied to your phone. Just another thing Nokia/Microsoft owes me for :-(
Zagg replaces the skins without any questions asked. Just had to do it for some that are being exchanged for problems, just send them the old one and they are fine.
I had this issues on my old 920. I dreaded ever resetting it. Luckily the headphone jack died so ATT replaced it.
I can tell you that if my phone ever froze up like that, I would turn the phone in for a replacement... but it's never happened.
Pretty sure if left off charger while gears are there until battery goes flat then put on charge it resets and boots after 20min. But yeah this should of been rectified days after launch.... Oh well at least we all have gdr2 and amber, lol
Seen it on Friday very good for people that don't know how to use Nokia care suite
AT&T made us wait this long for GDR2 so they could do enough testing to be sure tgat it would break a large number of phones, therefore more new phone sales.
Hmmm.....
Nice from Nokia... Cutting there loss....
I managed to do the keys (volume down, power and camera buttons) and the volume down and charge methods to fix my bricked phone. Think twice before resetting is my advice. Good job to Nokia for helping :)
I wish I had this a couple of weeks ago, but AT&T was really speedy in sending me a replacement phone back to me.
I thought I was the only one.
Still no solution for that volume issue where one cannot increase or decrease the volume,especially while playing music.
Haven't heard of this issue. Does it apply to all Nokia windows phones?
On both 920 & 720
Say if you are listening to music & you decrease the volume to zero & you skip to the next song & increase the volume. Nada. It stays silent. But when you have increased the volume to maximum & skip to the next song the sound is back but this time you cannot decrease it!! Very irritating. I think this applies to the default music player,not Nokia music.
Uhh not really. It actually is rather random. I have had this problem before but the volume stays at the last lvl from when the music or podcast has been played. So if you start it on twenty three then it stays on 23. If you then decrease the volume to 15 and back out to where you can reselect or "play" the same item then it will play that item at 15. It seems to be a headphone problem with me. It works outside of using headphones but it really only occurs when I use headphones often.
Now I only use Bluetooth headsets or clips.
Eh? So you expect the volume to go back to default as full when you set it to a prescribed level,exit out,then back in. ? Naturally it will stay the same level you left it in,right?
Sorry...i meant when entering the song on a set number and then trying to change it. The volume would stay on that set number. So to even change the volume you would have to back out of the podcast or song and then hit play again. The volumes only changes if you change it before you hit play. If you already had hit play then you are stuck on what ever volume your device was at the time of hitting play.
That fault doesn't happen on my L920. Just tried it. So it must be device dependent.
On 920 i had that problem earlier but it seems sorted out now. But my brother's 720 has that problem pre & post Amber
You used the default music player,right?
I use the default one almost all the time. Almost 100%.
Just made use of this solution today after my Lumia 820 got stuck in a boot cycle. Was dreading sending it in for repairs! Luckily this solved the problem :)
I'm having the same boot up problem after GDR2/Amber update. Did it wipe your data or was it all good after you used the nokia care fix?its been well over a day looking at these spinning cogs D:
I had this issue a few months back. This software fixed it right up.
Where's path or instagram or flipboard?? Oh wait... Wrong article.
Came out just in time for me, the Amber update did not fix my other storage problems and poor battery life, and of course the hard reset just gave me spinning cogs on my AT&T 920, so this made a world of difference.
Think before you reset the phone there are many tricks tips out there.
Only a soft reset or hard reset. If that doesn't work, there's no quick fix
Where was this weeks ago when att sent me 4 920's back to back that kept damn spinning and bricked...so frustrating! They finally sent me a 1020 free...we will see how it is when it gets here
If you got a free 1020 out of it you should be more than happy :)
Dang I should tried to do that! I was sent two "like-new" warranty devices that were both defective so I just went to a CSC and hot it exchanged.
I just had the same problem with AT&T refurbished units. The flash on my 920 stopped working, was sent two different refurbished 920s that both had problems where they would restart on their own or lock up so that I would have to do a soft reset. The first even had faulty Bluetooth. Sent both back and I'm back on my original. AT&T says I can only get refurbished unless I extend my contract and I'm not willing to do that.
Can I update my l520.......?
Installed it, but the last screen (where u need to choose the username and country) doesn't want to close...
Meanwhile Samsung ativ S users can now install custom roms
Good for those 8%
Trying it today, unfortunately. :-( Update: Works great. Now I need to figure out why my message backups will not sync properly to stop getting the annoying error. It stops if I turn my messaging sync off. :-S
Nice!! I had two Lumias that did the same thing at software updates, so this is a nice feature to have! Go Nokia!!
Umm finally?
I doubt very much that Nokia have officially released this updated suite to the general public. Which means that if you do use it and you end up bricking your phone Nokia could refuse to honour your warranty if they wanted to.
does this do anything that Nokia Care Suite doesn't?
What phone is that on the first picture ( above, the yellow one)??
It looks bigger than 920, and stunning...
I just do the Vol+Power sequence to fix it.
Unfortunately that doesn't always work.
I remove the sim card everytime I make a hard reboot... And it took me around 5-10 minutes...
The nsu version is 4.1.0 not 4.0.1.......
This gdr2 + amber update has been hell. I had to do the above mentioned method. I then needed sysapp checker to get missing system updates. Following that, it used google accout instead of advanced->active sync when pulling in old data. Now I have WiFi unable to turn on ("try again layer or try rebooting") and Bing search freezes. This update is total crap!
All this stuck up at boot, has to do with the amount of data u have in your damn phone. It's a phone for christ sakes, give it chance. Mine took like an half our to come back when I reseted mine, I hade like 19gigs worth of data on the phone prior resetting it. And I wouldn't update my phone if I had more that 15 gigs used. So don't just blame Nokia for it.
It's about time they have a solution for this issue. When I updated my 920 in August I got that same issue. I tried everything, I finally gave up and brought it to a Rogers store. One week later my device was in working order again. Lucky for me I still had my 900 to use. This is a must have application for all Nokia users. Downloading a backup copy right now.
Is this that widespread if a problem?
My first wp7 device bricked after the first update.... Simply took it back to the store, they gave me a new one for free...still happy with the phone and platform 100%
I never got this problem on my Lumia 920.
Me either. 822
If someone had the spinning gears, they really shouldn't have to go through this. They need to make it so it doesn't happen (meaning if it is like that for more than 3 hours). And some people have Macs, so...
Flashing the firmware using NCS worked for me. I bought a 920 from a friend and we got the spinning gears for a day after a reset.
On another note after each ota update on my 820 I would have issues with background tasks and battery life only a reset would fix it.
Every time there is a update for my 920 I can't use that phone for days. The wheels of hell spinning and spinning wtf is that lol every time I'm sick of fixing it.
Glad we have a fix like this, but it's been almost 11 months for wp8. This should be a priority as the spinning gears issue is way too common. I've had android 2.3 thru 4.1 and never had an issue updating or restoring the phone. If my 1020 ever experiences the spinning gears, as a last resort I'll remember this thread.
I've had the spinning gears twice now after resetting via the settings menu. However, using the button combo to reset a WP 8 phone actually worked without the spinning gears
Well, at least this gives me a bit more confidence to keep giving NOKIA a try. I had that Gears issue and it took like 3 days of resetting for it to go away. Of course, if you buy it unlocked, no warranty :-( so I had to wait it out. Fixed it and gave it away. Got maself an Ativ S and couldn't be happier. My next phone will probably be an HTC. It's the only company I've yet to support on WP. Hopefully they give us HTC One variant.
I really wanted to give HTC a try. But the only thing keeping me from doing it is Nokia's software. HERE applications and Nokia's camera suite of apps. I don't care about Nokia Music, though.
Soft and hard resetting with the volume and power buttons on my phone 50 times usually fixes the issue..
That happened to me when I updated my phone's firmware. The spinning cogs kept going forever until my device ran out of battery. After that, I charged it and it came back to normal... And properly updated.
I've found that letting the battery drain usually fixes it also.
This happened to my original Lumia 920 and AT&T gave me a replacement and then the sound went out on that one so they gave me another. This all happened in the space of two weeks. That being said, I love my Lumia 920 and wouldn't trade it for any other phone, except the 1020 of course.
No back up phone? I would suggest one if having service is that critical in your life!
"Life Saver"
The update of mine went through, but my Ford sync can't read text messages. Any body else?
Man, im so glad I haven't experienced a brick during an update. I think I would cry
4gb in other but not risking the reset again.
Oh so I see that WP FINALLY admits that the update has jammed up more phones than not...Thanks for posting this 3 days after everyone's phones have bricked up. BTW, the fanboys attacked people who are upset at their bricked phones has to stop. The suggestion that "well if your phone is that important you should have a back up phone" may be the most ignorant thing ever said. Do we have back up cars when ours breaks down on the road? No. We expect things that we buy to work and function. That's a standard of business. Don't be a troll.
Iv tinkered with a couple 920's 620's and an 820 no problems with updates must be a very rare bug
heheh, happens to me all the times on my 920. Fix for that was reseting phone numerous times and that helped all the times. Sometimes, i had to restart it 40 times ;)

I had same issue on my 925, but restaring didnt work at all. My fix was new replacement ;)

But thax nokia, thx for fix. Now im not worry after every update ;)
WOW! This came just in time! My 920 had been stuck this way for a couple days. Was trying to reset it to send it off to repair the cracked screen.
Luckily my Lumia 920 is continuing to run like a dream. I hope it remains that way. Every update for my 920 was smooth and quick; here's hoping that WP8.1 is smoother still.
Thank you for linking our article!
Data and app lost or not?
Many, many thanks! My phone had been a brick since Thursday's GDR2+Amber update, and with travel I just haven't had time to be on hold with any tech support. Tried all kinds of button-combo resets, but none worked. My husband found your post and voila! Phone is completely back!
Hmm, weird. My 920 and wifes 820 updated without issue. I had a co-worker whose 822 took several hours to update. At least there's a fix.
I find it weird that only the ATT variant seems to have this problem. This didn't seem to be a problem until ATT released the GDR2 update for their phones that we started seeing people getting the CWOD. Anyways, this'll give me a way to "clean install" Amber, lol.
WRONG! I had the International Variant and it happened to me.
My VZW Lumia 928 is doing it. I tried downloading and installing a speech pack from the speech recognition section of settings. when it restarted to finish the install, it stuck at the spinning gears. Been that way for 1.5 hours now.
I don't believe that you resetting the phone 50 times. But in common sense you reset it 2 or 3 times because you don't know what to do.
The spinning cogs issue is bug, I avoid that by simply deleting all my email accounts before performing the reset. I got my 920 to reset in under 5 minutes using this workaround
Honestly Nokia owes me money. I've had a 4 phones brick on me and luckily 1 recovered after two days. Problem is two I got replaced and one I went through my rip off Microsoft Store warranty where I had to pay another $50 to get it replaced on warranty after I was sold the warranty being told for an extra $100 I get two replacements. No one bothered to mention that there was another $50 fee at the time of replacement. The reason Nokia owes me money Is because I unlocked everyone of them. That's $50 x 3 replacements. So in total I spent an extra $200 on this bullshit 920. Then I bought a 1020. That's working good so far but if I go through similar bullshit with the 1020 I'm done with Nokia for life.
To report my own experience, for those users like me who flashed to non-ATT Amber ROMs... I didn't see this mentioned anywhere.
I wasn't able to use NSU to bring my AT&T 920 (RM-820), flashed with the Euro Dev Amber Rom (thus turning it into RM-821) back after resetting it tonight. It had been a few days since my live tiles and toasts had worked correctly, and I had hoped a simple reset would save me from the dreaded perma-cogs. Unfortunately I've run into the perma-cogs a few times before.
Sure enough, the phone reset via settings put the phone into the permanent cog-wheel spin. After over 2 hours of waiting, button smashing, etc... I tried this mentioned NSU fix. NSU recognized my 920 as RM-820 (even though it has the euro dev rom on it) and threw an error when trying to verify the firmware to resolve.
Ended up just re-flashing the EURO dev rom using the previously known method of using NCS to break ouf of the cog-spin. Something I'll gladly live with. Don't regret flashing at all, as AT&T has disappointed.
To the person who has 4 lumia 920s......Why do you have 4 ?. And how are they different ?
Hi I'm Moody, the writer of the orginal article and I have to say to all the commenters out there who swear they didn't have this issue, we know this doesn't happen to all Lumia phones, its a problem now if it happened to all phones it would be a disaster.
the article is a last way out for people with no Nokia care in sight for thousend of miles.
When i got my 1020 I tried resetting my 920 so I could lend it to a friend to try wp8 he was not impressed when I told him it had got stuck on the gears, it has taken 10 days so far just to get to the repair shop!
Never had any problems with updates... What i recommend everybody to do before updating is to move all photos from your phone to pc or what ever... From my experience this will speed up the process (and maybe make it more reliable, i guess)
It should've said "Oh, no-kia! :("
uhhh if only this have come 1 week ago when my L920 got stuck in the gears screen :(.. now am waiting my replace... 8 days and several more to go..
Oh my gosh Rich, I could kiss ya! I have tried every trick on the book and was just about to send it off to NOKIA before I saw this article. Now my Lumia 920 is back from spinning gears purgatory!
My phone was bricked with the gears for 52 hours and I followed the steps and it worked. I'm tentative to update the software and it seems to have really messed up my battery again since it says its at 18% 5 minutes after I started charging from 4% but its working.
After you fix it you may still want to take to your carrier for them to update it to the current software.
Thanks again!
:-)
This was the ONLY thing that saved my 920 after I did a factory reset.
If you have clogs then I would buy a decent phone. Shocking that phones are bricked so easily. Ive had mine replaced by CERT Nokia ceo office.
buying nokia phone was fucking mistake
Many say that they don't have issues. Many say they do. It's all preference. It's not a battle of who has the better phone. For me as far as smartphones, I've owned the iPhone 3g, 4, 4S, 5, and now the 5C which just replaced my Nokia Lumia 928. The Lumia. Text input is quick, decent network for 4G and wifi, things load relatively fast, but, it still lags in comparison to my iPhone. The screen turn to landscape view stutters like most non iPhones do. The apps for it are few and are slow for many of the more popular ones. I've had a few crash or freeze my phone. Not to mention that the Windows version of apps are very watered down versions. A lot of the common features on let's say Tumblr or FB just aren't there as where Android and iOS versions have just about all the features of the desktop versions which is both frustrating and disappointing because well, it's a "Windows" phone.
The customization is very lacking. No custom background, low volume for alarms, no ability to have custom text tones let alone text tones for specific contacts. I really wanted to like this phone. The concept is great. And if you're not a big techie power user, then this is good enough for you when it works. I honestly don't think the mobile phone OS was ready for prime time, but hopefully Microsoft is learning from all of this and actually takes the time to listen to what people want. For now I'll keep enjoying my snappy iPhone. I will say before I end this post, is that the camera is AMAZING.
WOW, thank you very much for this post! I recently sold my Lumia 920 on eBay and performed a reset for the new buyer, I sh*t myself when the phone didn't boot!
Absolute crap! This is now my second windows Nokia to have done this. First was a 920, and now my 1020. I was selling the 1020 )trading for an iPhone 5s) and the guy called me and said it's still spinning. Wtf!!! my 920 is completely bricked and Nokia won't work on it because the screen is cracked and that "voided the warranty". Even though I used it for a month with a cracked screen
I can recommend that software above (NSU 4.1.0) - it recovered my Nokia Lumia 920 and it made it straight into Amber update. My Nokia Lumia 920 has worked over 1 year without any "spinning gears", but their came up when I bought now Nokia Lumia 1520 and decided to click on "Reset" button on my 920 because I wanted to clean it that I can give it to my daughter's son without my information. I made after that hard reset and also all other advices which I found from the internet, but always those "spinning gears" came up and it didn't help if I let it continue spinning gears over night. So that software helped, though after it has downloaded that huge file (1,36GB) it said it can't install because it can't find that device (or something like that), but when I pressed volume down + power buttons of 920 until it vibrates, so it found Lumia 920 again and after that the installing process went through successfully. Now I am so happy that I can give this great device to my grandchild as a christmas present.
Thank you very much for the article. Yesterday, I just wanted to reset my 920, but after 4 hours, I stucked in the spinning cogs. after that I followed the instruction mentioned in the article. and i can safely restore my phone. This is the second time I experienced this, the first time, I gave up and sent my phone to Nokia care for a month, thankfully the second time only took me half a day to fix the problem. But this is concerning, I reseted my phone because I noticed some slow down and irregularities in the phone. but in this condition, resetting my phone resulted in infinite spinning cogs. while if I reset it after hard reset, the problem is not there.
Thank you for the article. Finally switched back to Android after having the worst phone I have ever owned, but when I tried the factory reset on the Nokia Lumia 928 the gears of death showed up. Hopefully now it will work and I can sell it. Although that "1.2gb" download is really 4.12gb for me.
Rich, you helped me save my crappy crappy piece of crap lumia 920 from becoming a crappy paper weight. this worked perfected and now, i can get rid of this shitty pos crap of a phone nokia used to call, "flagship".
Hello Rich, Thanks much for the tip did help to great extent, really appreciate. Did help to a great extent, the firmware download of 1.36Gb completed, but experienced this hurdle while trying to update the device, and prompts the error message below; "Device updating failed. Error code: 0x80131500. you may try to do recovery or cancel. if you cancel your device may stop working" Will be grateful if further assistance can be redered or provided to help get my phone back up and functional, becuase it's been 4 days i have been offline, and my work is suffering. Thanks much guys in anticipation to your swift and positive responses.
i have a lumia 1020 and it's dead. i tried this but when i press vol down and the power key it vibartes but it doesn't detect from the computer. plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz help.
After 72h of spinning gears finally only this helped me fix my phone! But you seriously have to make updating our WPhones smoother!
I actually had a spinning cogs for 24hrs from just trying to update to wp8.1 but it kept failing so i tried to factory reset and brought the spinning cogs that i couldn't get out of until i found this solution and it worked perfectly for me. I had already downloaded the firmware files using navifirm+ then put them in the program data packages folder for NSU 4.1.0 and it worked. Flashed my Lumia 625 successfully back to Lumia Black then went to restoring my data and i am back up and running to updated wp8.1. Thanx to this post.
There is a problem. Please restart the NSU for retail and try again. If the problem persist uninstall NSU for retail and download the latest version of the application. <<<<<<<<<< WTF?? even the official nokia solution couldn't do anything about my phone? any suggestion?
This work for my phone. But you all need to remember: 1. Restart your computer after install the app. 2. When you try to conect the phone to the app, please just be patient and wait for the app conect your phone automatically. 3. Only use one USB cable to conect to the laptop. Take all other USB out. 4. After download, and you try to install, it will give you an error code. Dont worry it happy to me too. I keep try to install again again and again. Finally it work for me. Hope this help!

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