Windows Device Recovery Tool Replaces Windows Phone Recovery Tool

Microsoft this week updated its Windows Phone Recovery Tool, renaming it to Windows Device Recovery Tool and adding support for the HTC 8X.

That last bit is important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Microsoft inadvertently sent out a pre-release build of Windows 10 Mobile to Windows Insiders with that device, bricking them in the process. So by adding support for the 8X to the Windows Device Recovery Tool, Microsoft is finally providing these users with a way to recover their phones back to Windows Phone OS 8.1.

Beyond that, Windows Device Recovery Tool remains a must-have part of every Windows user’s toolkit, and something I keep at the ready these days specifically because the Windows 10 Mobile upgrade experience is so unreliable. I’ve had to recover numerous handsets—sometimes the same ones more than once—back to Windows Phone 8.1 because the Windows 10 Mobile upgrade didn’t work. In most cases, it left them in a state where they just keep rebooting. (Which makes recovery interesting, since the PC-based Windows Device Recovery Tool can only “see” the device—which is attached via USB cable to the PC–during a short window in that reboot cycle. But it works.)

Anyway, you can download the Windows Device Recovery Tool from the Microsoft web site. If you already have an older version of the Windows Phone Recovery Tool, it will upgrade to Windows Device Recovery Tool (version 3.0.1 or newer) automatically the next time you run it.