For the first time, an update for Windows Phone is being gradually pushed out to users beginning today. The update doesn’t do much except “update the updater”, which apparently needs to happen before the long awaited “NoDo” update arrives in the first part of March.
While we haven’t seen the update here, and a number of users, including ones commenting on our earlier post, seem to be having no issues with getting the update installed, that isn’t true for everyone.
We first noticed a tweet from an Alex Roebuck, who says his phone has bricked because of the update:
He has quite a Twitter thread ongoing with @WinPhoneSupport, and as of this writing it hasn’t yet been resolved.
Alex’s dilemma led us to a number of other reports of problems, some documented at Microsoft Answers: a thread titled “(7004:7008) Update stalled at step 7 of 10: Creating a backup 100%”, and “Update Bricked My Phone” both report multiple instances of problems with the update hanging, making the phone unusable. Some of the phones are Samsung Omnia 7s, but some users are also reporting issues with the Samsung Focus.
Microsoft has responded via the @WindowsPhoneSupport Twitter account that it is aware of some problems and is working through them. A moderator in the Microsoft Answers threads points to a number of Microsoft Knowledge Base articles, especially to KB 2498092, “The Zune software stops responding when attempting to back up Windows Phone 7”. An update to Zune last week should have updated the .dll in question, but be sure that your Zune software is fully up to date before you attempt to update your phone.
As we noted, there are many reports of updates progressing normally without any problems, and it’s hard to tell if this is a widespread or just an isolated issue. We’ll be monitoring it from here (still haven’t had a notification of an available update here yet, seems logical to assume that the updates may have been suspended until these issues are worked out).
If you do have problems, we suggest contacting @WinPhoneSupport and checking in with Microsoft Answers/Windows Phone, but let us know, too, if you’re having problems.