Fix: Reset forgotten Windows Phone pin remotely if locked out of it

I got an older Lumia 930 phone (nice big display and 20MP camera, Windows Mobile 8.1 upgradeable to Windows 10, main shortcoming is that it doesn’t have microSD slot) on big discount the other day, but after upgrading it to Windows 10 I accidentally entered the wrong PIN code at login an it managed to lock permanently.

I was having the deadlocking situation where after it locked asking me to reboot, at each reboot (even tried resetting with power+vol down for 10sec), it was saying the same thing again and again.

Luckily I had already activated a Microsoft account (was required at Win8.1 in order to download the Windows upgrade advisor app from the store), so following the guidance at https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mobiledevices/forum/mdlumia-mdsettings/how-to-reset-phone-if-i-forgot-my-lockscreen/ff4d7ba3-d301-4392-b05a-46bac68dcc69 and some other forum discussions, I went to http://account.microsoft.com, then at the Devices section, selected to see more info on that specific phone and then from Find My Phone I choose to lock it with a new 6-digit pin.

There, it asks you to also enter a message that is supposed to display to the user of the phone, but haven’t seen it appear. However it does make it to change it successfully.

For changing the pin remotely the phone obviously needs to have wifi or data access active (if it doesn’t and doesn’t allow you to set it without entering a code, try plugging it via USB to a Windows 10 computer first or if you’ve set it up to connect automatically to open hotspots find one such). Else will need to have a SIM and number and be connected (correct SIM pin entered) to mobile (GSM etc.) network. The lock phone pane at account.microsoft.com does ask you if the phone has a number assigned to it or not, to send some special locking SMS I guess.

Fix: Windows Phone update error 80072f8f

I was setting up a new Lumia phone (with Windows Phone 8.1) and neither phone update, nor the (Here) maps downloads were working. When trying Settings / Phone Update, it was showing error 80072f8f and was pointing to http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp8/basics/solutions-to-update-issues to read more info. However that error code wasn’t listed there. Wonder if there is any page listing all the possible error codes. I find it silly if they have error codes that aren’t documented anywhere officially.

I looked it up on Google (sorry Bing!) and found http://www.techanges.com/fix-windows-phone-error-80072f8f/, which was saying this was related to time/date discrepancy between the phone and the windows update server. Obviously the maps also get their updates via the same system, although the maps update was showing the misleading message that it couldn’t connect to the maps library at that moment.

Although I had set correct timezone, it had wrong date/time, it was set to autoupdate date/time, but forgot that it had no SIM card in it yet. Obviously it doesn’t get these updates from a time server, but from the mobile phone connection provider. Hope Windows 10 phone fixes that and gets the date/time from time server like the one from NIST or from Microsoft that Windows uses on the desktop.