You heard right - there is no way to remove the Windows Live ID assigned to your phone without a factory reset. Considering there is no way to back up app data and messages, this presents a huge issue for anyone who wants to or is required to change their ID.
I had a problem just before the Mango update; I wasn't able to use the windowsphone.com services and so removed my phone from the site, assuming that I would be able to add it again in order to fix the problem. However, there was no option to do so. I asked around and someone told me I should try removing my account from my phone and logging in once more, in order to re-assign my phone to my Live ID. Upon discovering that I wasn't able to, I contacted support and they confirmed, to my dismay, that I would be required to completely reset my phone to change my ID.
I've now lost all the data I had on my phone: all my SMS messages, all my game saves - anything that wasn't synced into the cloud - gone. All because I just wanted to remove my Windows Live account from the phone. Another user had their XBL gamertag hacked and lost everything on their phone, too.
Quite honestly, it's just ridiculous and never should happen in the first place. Unfortunately, many users won't notice the issue until they want to change their ID sometime in the future. At that point, they would lose everything. So, I've created a feature suggestion at the UserVoice support page.:
http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/forums/101801-feature-suggestions/suggestions/2283489-allow-for-change-removal-of-windows-live-id-withou
Please vote for it, if you can. It's vital that problems like these are found and eliminated before they affect the general public.
Related
Hey guys,
I got my Gingerbread update last night, 2.3.3, bringing the HTC software version to 2.42.405.2 - however every few seconds I get a pop-up saying that android.process.acore has stopped. As I understand it from the (admittedly small) bit of research I've done, this contains the contacts database - and it crashing means I can't use the phone, people or messaging apps, so my phone right now is a glorified browser and twitter client, with a camera and an annoying popup every few seconds.
I've contacted HTC support but I don't hold my breath for anything more useful than a hard reset - if they tell me to do this then I may as well get a new phone (I was planning to anyway, so may just bring that plan forward).
Some solutions I've read involve removing the account that the contacts database is associated with, but I keep my contacts on the phone, and though I have a Google account set up, it won't sync my contacts anymore because of this problem (I know this because a friend changed her number the other day and when I view the contacts on gmail, it still says her old number, which I deleted. If I try to remove the google account, the phone tells me it's needed and I would need to factory reset my phone to do so.
I am NOT prepared to factory reset my phone to fix this issue - the same way I would not be prepared to format my harddrive to fix most issues. I'm going to try and backup my contacts to my pc in the meantime, but is there anyone out there who can help me?
Well, first of all hello to everyone! I am new in here but have been visiting XDA for a pretty long time now.
Now with the introduction aside, let me get to my issue.
I don't know if you have noticed some problems with non-working live tiles of apps pinned at the home screen, the inability to connect to messaging (Live Messenger, Facebook chat) or other general problems.
Well, I contacted @WinPhoneSupport (as well as many, many other people) to report two problems (the first two mentioned above) that I'm currently experiencing. I was advised by them to restart my phone and then pull my battery for at least two minutes in order to see what happens. So, I left my battery out overnight but my problems weren't fixed.
I was told then to restore my backup and reinstall Mango
After thinking about it for some hours, I thought it would be better to start over again by doing a factory reset but then I suddenly remembered that some things I care about were not saved in the Zune "backup" so now I'm stuck again with the problem.
So, I am now in a dilemma; should I just reset my phone and go my way up till Mango from RTM? If so, is there some homebrew that could save data which is not saved by Zune? I'm interested on saving some ringtones (not available anywhere else!) I downloaded from the Insider app. [ I was considereing using the Windows Phone Device Manager but it can't identified my phone (dev unlocked). ]
or
Is there any way I could possibly fix the "Can't connect to see who's online" error message in Messaging?
I appreciate any help you can provide to my problem.
A factory reset will do. I did it and it was restores to mango, not the pre mango state. Live tiles etc works well after that.
Sent from my LG-E900
astroXP said:
Well, first of all hello to everyone! I am new in here but have been visiting XDA for a pretty long time now.
Now with the introduction aside, let me get to my issue.
I don't know if you have noticed some problems with non-working live tiles of apps pinned at the home screen, the inability to connect to messaging (Live Messenger, Facebook chat) or other general problems.
Well, I contacted @WinPhoneSupport (as well as many, many other people) to report two problems (the first two mentioned above) that I'm currently experiencing. I was advised by them to restart my phone and then pull my battery for at least two minutes in order to see what happens. So, I left my battery out overnight but my problems weren't fixed.
I was told then to restore my backup and reinstall Mango
After thinking about it for some hours, I thought it would be better to start over again by doing a factory reset but then I suddenly remembered that some things I care about were not saved in the Zune "backup" so now I'm stuck again with the problem.
So, I am now in a dilemma; should I just reset my phone and go my way up till Mango from RTM? If so, is there some homebrew that could save data which is not saved by Zune? I'm interested on saving some ringtones (not available anywhere else!) I downloaded from the Insider app. [ I was considereing using the Windows Phone Device Manager but it can't identified my phone (dev unlocked). ]
or
Is there any way I could possibly fix the "Can't connect to see who's online" error message in Messaging?
I appreciate any help you can provide to my problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would advise you to reconsider if there is any data that you would like to keep or unwilling to drop before doing any reset...
weijoon said:
I would advise you to reconsider if there is any data that you would like to keep or unwilling to drop before doing any reset...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, there's information I would like to keep but I don't know how
For example:
I downloaded 5 ringtones from the "Insider" app, at first I thought Zune would sync them into the Music folder (PC) but that was not the case.
There are a few SMS I would like to keep, they're not that important but it'd be nice to have 'em.
I suppose there's nothing I can do to save my game scores.
I think that's it, I can't remember of anything else Zune hasn't already save on my PC.
I know I could use Windows Phone Device Manager but I can't get it to work. (Yes, my phone it's dev unlocked)
You can try to copy your sms to a word document and upload it to skydrive. But you won't be able to import them back into messaging hub. As for gamescores, only XBOX live games will be saved.
They really need to alter the way Zune does backups. I have some live tiles that wont function but i'll be damned if i have to reset and they install all of my apps and tile locations again.
@morpheuszg That's a good idea, simple but that'll do it
And yes! MSFT gotta do something with Zune when it comes to backing up
Does anyone know whether Windows Phone Device Manager can access the ringtone folder in WP7 and if it's Mango ready?
None of your games progress will be saved, including Xbox Live games. What you wont lose are the achievements you've already unlocked, but you will have to play those games again from the beginning if you havent finished them already.
Best thing you could do is finish whatever games you want, forward your sms's to another phone where you can send them back again (or copy to word as suggested). I have pinged Joe Belfiore & Brandon Watson several times on twitter about the lack of proper backup, add your voice as well because it really is a disgrace that there is no way to backup data we care about, on the phone that is supposed to be all about the people and things we care about.
Hi all - I searched for references to this issue, but haven't found anything yet. Hope someone here can help.
I've been using my Galaxy Nexus (LTE / Verizon) since mid December, locked, unrooted, vanilla - and it's been great. I've been using the native email apps for my GMail account and my work/corporate account on our company's Exchange Server. All has worked perfectly so far. First sign of something weird happened last night.
Last night I backed up, rooted and unlocked my GNex (using the WugFresh utility). I followed the directions closely -- all worked pretty much perfectly. As suggested, I took 2 backups: first without system apps and settings, and the 2nd including them. After I was done rooting and unlocking, I restored the big backup with system apps and settings. Only thing I noticed is that passwords are apparently not part of the settings that can be saved/restored (makes sense!), so I had to reenter credentials for my email apps.
This done, I sync to both GMail and Exchange Server, receive and send mail just fine. Only weird thing is that when I tap the EMail icon to start up the email client that talks to Exchange Server, in addition to opening up my inbox properly, I ALSO see two error messages in sequence:
"Account wasn't found. It may have been removed."
and
"Folder wasn't found. It may have been removed."
The errors then fade, and email is perfectly usable.
I'm guessing that some folder and account entry was restored along with the apps from my backup, and that whatever these pointed to no longer exist, and were superseded by they email app when I reconnected to the Exchange Server during setup after rooting / unlocking.
I've looked - and only see a single account configured in the app -- the correct one. I've checked in Settings / Apps, and there are no options to clear data or cache.
I'm wondering if I should delete the one account I see and re-add it...not sure if that will make a difference.
Anyone have a clue what's going on, and what I might do about it?
thanks in advance,
Jon
Im having the exact same problem!!
jaseandjess said:
Im having the exact same problem!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the end, I wound up doing a factory reset on the phone. I was tempted to delete and recreate the account, but I'm convinced there was a phantom (non-existent?) folder / account that the email client kept trying to refer to and that this would have persisted. A factory reset cured the issue, and this time I did NOT restore my entire backup including system apps and data. Instead, I let Google Play and Amazon App store reinstall 99% of my apps, leaving me 3 or 4 that I had to do by hand. In the end it didn't take long at all to do this, and result is a happy Galaxy Nexus once more.
Jon
jonstrong said:
In the end, I wound up doing a factory reset on the phone. I was tempted to delete and recreate the account, but I'm convinced there was a phantom (non-existent?) folder / account that the email client kept trying to refer to and that this would have persisted. A factory reset cured the issue, and this time I did NOT restore my entire backup including system apps and data. Instead, I let Google Play and Amazon App store reinstall 99% of my apps, leaving me 3 or 4 that I had to do by hand. In the end it didn't take long at all to do this, and result is a happy Galaxy Nexus once more.
Jon
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, just wanted to let you know what the solution was in my case. I was messing around with everything, wasting two full days with about 100 times recreating the account, trying to restore/replace Mail/ExchangeServices app/data in various different ways, factory reset, reflashing system, etc. etc. ... nothing helped!
Finally, a few minutes ago I got it: Just recreate the stupid homescreen link! I never thought about trying to start the Mail application via "all apps". If I did (earlier), I would have seen (earlier) that the message does not appear then. It only appears when starting it via my homescreen link, which is actually a widget (looking like a normal app link), configured to open a certain folder of a certain account. So the actual problem was just that this widget could not find the "old" account anymore (probably because some account id changes if an account is deleted and recreated). The reason I've been fooled over and over again (even after factory resets and system flashes) is because I always restored my homescreen stuff in one way or another, so I always used the same old broken link.
D'OH!
Hope that next time someone comes across this issue this post will help. Currently there seems to be no (other) solution to this on the internet. At least I did not find anything in the past two days.
Thanks for posting an easy solution!
mychi said:
Hi, just wanted to let you know what the solution was in my case. I was messing around with everything, wasting two full days with about 100 times recreating the account, trying to restore/replace Mail/ExchangeServices app/data in various different ways, factory reset, reflashing system, etc. etc. ... nothing helped!
Finally, a few minutes ago I got it: Just recreate the stupid homescreen link! I never thought about trying to start the Mail application via "all apps". If I did (earlier), I would have seen (earlier) that the message does not appear then. It only appears when starting it via my homescreen link, which is actually a widget (looking like a normal app link), configured to open a certain folder of a certain account. So the actual problem was just that this widget could not find the "old" account anymore (probably because some account id changes if an account is deleted and recreated). The reason I've been fooled over and over again (even after factory resets and system flashes) is because I always restored my homescreen stuff in one way or another, so I always used the same old broken link.
D'OH!
Hope that next time someone comes across this issue this post will help. Currently there seems to be no (other) solution to this on the internet. At least I did not find anything in the past two days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much. I just had to recreate my account settings (5 of them since Ihave corporate but also use exchange settings for hotmail) and hated to see this message (and a second one similar but about a folder who could not be found). I removed the icon on the home screen and put the Email app (not the widget to avoid the same problem in the future) back and not more error! I really did not want to reset my phone.
This is recurring in all phones I've had for at least a year now. Once again...And it is just now that I am once again getting upset at Google Play Services making itself a device admin daily on startup so it can update its app daily. So it can weasel into the browser and log my account and store cookies and track and etc etc etc.
If I do not lose my phone, then it should stop activating the find my device. If I lock my screen, then it should stop activating itself as an administrator. If it was just to find the device, then it should stop putting itself as an account in my browser.
The Google Play Services can no longer be reverted. It has turned the phone into just another chunk of Google Garbage.
It's a critical part of android. What is it you are trying to achieve by locking it down?
James.Miller said:
It's a critical part of android. What is it you are trying to achieve by locking it down?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
site storage in browser. I believe it is s carrier config or carrier settings. I have ridden myself of it by disabling carrier configs on other phones but here I can't disable carrier system apps.
I play with it off on some phones, and of course on rooted phones. It is irremovable here now. I had it removed during the first few days on my new A70 but now can't get it off noway no how.
The carrier configs and other things from carrier are a real problem. Carriers (used to) push settings they deem appropriate at regular intervals on an old phone I had. Their settings push included things like turning on location, and worse. all kinds of settings would get changed. Google calls these in its "partner" app. It's all tied together. There are credit agencies certs, and security companies in the system app.
James.Miller said:
It's a critical part of android. What is it you are trying to achieve by locking it down?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I may sell the phone if I can't use it on internet without continued police insults on my humanity. I'm sick of it all. Been taking abuse for years. Only useful as a gaming and music player.
In my experience, once you have confirmed to your own recognition that they are behind the curtain of the device, talking to you invisibly thru the back door in the comments sections of the internet, then the phone is no good.
I believe that screenshots of their android back-doored comments, -- along with proof in pictures or recordings that they have been speaking in narrative to you that way -- should be grounds for money back from the phone company for the device. The device is faulty then beyond the shadow of a doubt and worthless and irreparable. Money back should be the rule for hacked devices.
comments, recommendations...or other festures being hacked. I have had apps hacked, I have had voice recognition dictation hacked. etc. I don't remember a list of features of android I've stopped using because of insult hacks. The predictive words on the keypads, and auto correct, used to be a favorite exploit they'd use to deliver cracked commentaries against my humanity...
All features and apps I no longer use. And how many people would never pick up on how these devices are being used against them.
I think the phones should be peogrammed to avoid cached dns results, and to randomize the dns it uses. The apps such as YouTube should never return to an open session or use a cache. These devices are fast enough and simple LTE/4G is fast enough to load fresh sessions from sites from new lookup services.
if Google needs to have Find My Device in Android to serve customers who are afraid their devices will be stolen by non professional phone thieves or lost, then they should sell different versions for those who don't want a system admin like Google which gets its money from data theft and spamming.
The persistent settings in the browser for its default site bothers me. I got rid of it on my Oreo running phone. Took awhile, but I finally got rid of it on one phone by deleting all browser data. It comes back when the browser restarts on internet tho, and persists again like a foul barnacle. Used to be able to get rid of it.
Here it's seen it camoflages itself if I change the default search page, but it still persists
Hello everyone,
I'm used to the LineageOS on my previous phone and now I've upgraded recently to this phone but I feel my personal info too much available to Google and MI system apps and I don't want that, thats why I went to LineageOS on my previous phone but, like others custom firmwares, it have several bugs which limits the potential of the phone.
Even not using an google account I can feel my life is being spied because a few things happen:
- if someone calls me, a friend or whatever, and its not in my contacts list it asks me if its spam. For what? To send the info somewhere using the internet connection and warns others if its spam? If it reads my contacts for this it can read those for anything, like copy my whole contacts list which I'm not comfortable with and I'm not able to control. I'm afraid that later if i use the regular browser to access Gmail for instance, I'm afraid the OS is prepared to warn google that all the info that' I've shared so far belongs to that particular Google account and that phone IMEI is also used but that account. I'm crazy? Maybe, but all this is possible and I want to make it impossible.
- If i do not allow Google services from accessing my text messages APP (built-in app) i keep getting a warning from the system that something it will not go OK if I do not turn on that access from Google services. Why the hell should google services needs to access my texts? My first phone, 20 years ago, could send SMS without google, why the hell google needs to see my texts now?
The list continues but I'm not willing to loose the nice things this OS have too, but for me personal info is too valuable and I dont want to give away any information from my contacts list, SMS texts, the places I visit, my tastes and so on, all this is my personal life and no one needs to know about it, not even just for statistics. Some people on my contacts list doesn't use Android and dont want the personal phone number stored somewhere and connected to me somehow, not that Im a criminal or something like but all this combined together its like a personal "Facebook" for Google and MI to use, they know who are the persons who I connect with, who are near me at a certain period of the day, where I usually do shopping, well, all my life is being stored somewhere, and I want to end this.
Is there a way to keep the current OS and block every outgoing info coming from the phone? I've made some research and i come to this so far
- AFwall can be a solution, but how good it is?
- Removing google services is not an option using ADB, the OS will not work
- Disable google services is not working. The system keeps turning it on automatically
Please give me your feedbacks with your experiences about this security issue, I think several people feels the same way, and how did you managed a work around to this keeping the original OS.
PS: For now I didnt unlock the bootloader, but I will if the solution goes that way.
Thank you everyone
Tomalamix
Living in the age of Google, one cannot use phone & Internet without your info being collected for ad purposes or whatsoever.
Ad purposes i can live with that,. what I cant live with is my personal data being stored by a 3rd party company besides my cell operator
Ive been watching the Anti-Gapps group but it seems discontinued i guess, i think this is a task fitted for them