Force Updating Windows Phone 7 to Mango

Thanks Leen Kleijwegt of CORBUS for an e-mail pointing us to instructions on how to force the Mango update onto our Windows Phone 7 devices! :)

The instructions are here:

• wpcentral: Force Mango update early through Zune software and avoid frostbite

To quote from the above site that takes a long time to load due to the comments the process is as follows:

Steps to force a Mango update on phones for which Mango has started rolling out:

1. Connect your Windows Phone to a PC and launch the Zune software
2. Click on Phone > Settings > Update. Allow the software to tell you whether an update is available. If so, skip this guide. If not continue to the next step.
3. Time to force the update. Click another button (any of the options above or below the word Update). Then click the Update button again, and this time disconnect your computer from the internet after 1-2 seconds. Do this by pulling out the Ethernet cable, disabling Wi-Fi, etc. If it says your phone is already up to date, you didn't disconnect quickly enough and need to try this step again.
4. Wait 30 seconds or so and Zune should display a notification that an update is available. This is 7392, the first Mango pre-update.
5. Now reconnect to the internet and continue with the update process through the Zune software.
6. After 7392 is fully installed, you may receive a notification that another update is available. If so, install it now. If not, proceed to the next step.
7. If the second update isn't popping up on its own, repeat steps 3-5, causing the 7403 update to appear.
8. Install 7403, brave reader. Speeding right along, isn't it? ;)
9. Mango time! At this point, Zune should automatically start installing the last update, 7720, aka Mango. If it doesn't happen automatically, force it like we did in previous steps.
10. This last step is very important! Celebrate your phone’s new found Mango status by purchasing a mango smoothie at your nearest Smoothie King, Jamba Juice, Baskin Robbins, or similar establishment.

After a few tries with the Zune software and Ethernet cable process we received:

But Zune wants to be updated first:

Once that update finished we saw:

Update 7403 is Mango! Whoo Hoo! :)

Ah, but wait! All is not well in Zune update land:

Something burped in the process and the Zune software dropped out. So, off to flip between the update and Ethernet cable again to see what happens. That failed because the Zune software had seemingly disappeared.

We needed to restart the Zune software manually because it did not start when the phone was pulled and then plugged back into the shop PC again.

Once we started the Zune software, ran the Update/Ethernet step, we received the following:

We were finally able to run the Mango update on the phone!

Note that a full backup of the phone was done but we only have about 4GB of data on it so it should not take too long. The process is looking to take an hour or more. So, patience is definitely on order . . . whether it gets here in time is another story. ;)

Anticipation . . .

Hat Tip: Again thanks to Leen Kleijwegt of CORBUS

Now to get some reading in on all of the new features.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer