Users can no longer configure accounts on their phones

Feb 6, 2017 07:15 GMT  ·  By

Not even Microsoft seems to be very keen on keeping Windows phones alive these days, but there are users who continue to stick with the platform despite the en-masse developer migration to Android and iOS.

And many of these users are experiencing a new unexpected issue with Windows Phone 8.1, as their devices can no longer log in with Microsoft Accounts, which means that phones become pretty much useless.

What exactly is happening is hard to tell at this point, but users are complaining that when attempting to set up their Microsoft accounts on Windows Phone 8.1 devices, the process fails with an error reading “We can’t connect right now. Wait a few moments and try again.” Needless to say, trying again at a later time makes no difference and the issue persists.

Microsoft hasn’t provided a workaround and the company is yet to publicly acknowledge the issue, and users who are experiencing this bug can only attempt a device reset and, with a little luck, have their devices successfully synchronized with Microsoft accounts afterward.

Mostly affecting Windows Phone 8.1 devices

While it was initially believed that this was a problem encountered by users who downgraded from Windows 10 Mobile to Windows Phone using the Windows Device Recovery Tool, posts on Microsoft’s Community forums seem to indicate that this is happening on Windows Phone devices that were never upgraded to the new OS as well.

Furthermore, there are a few users claiming that a similar bug is affecting Windows 10 Mobile as well, while others say the glitch has been around for more than just a couple of weeks and is only now becoming more widespread.

We’re reaching out to Microsoft to ask for more information on what exactly is happening, but there’s no doubt that the firm is already aware of the issue given the number of posts on its own forums. In the meantime, a reset seems to be the only possible workaround and if you were planning on resetting a working device, you'd better not do it for the time being.