Reset a Windows Phone Device to Factory Default

Here’s a tip for the Windows Phone users out there.

There are two ways to reset your phone to factory default, one through the operating system itself and another with a button combination when you start up the phone. This might be handy if you are going to sell your phone and want to quickly clear your personal information or perhaps you’d like to simply wipe it clean and start afresh.

The first method can be undertaken as follows:

  1. Go into “Settings”,
  2. Scroll down to “About” and tap,
  3. Tap “Reset your phone”,
  4. Accept all of the prompts in the affirmative.
If, for whatever reason, you can’t get into the operating system (or you are impatient) you can use a combination of keys to achieve the same thing as follows:
  1. Turn off the device,
  2. Hold the “volume down”, camera and home buttons and then press the power button,
  3. Release the power button but hold the other three buttons,
  4. A screen will appear advising that pressing the home button will format the device,
  5. Press the home button,
  6. Press the home button again to confirm.
In either case, it shouldn’t take too long to get your phone back to its “factory default” state for whichever version of the operating system you have installed.

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