Meet the Ctrl+Alt+Del of Windows Phone 7.

Last night I ran into an issue with my Windows Phone 7 after installing and then uninstalling my microSD card.  The phone soft reset would not actually reset the phone.  This caused a major issue because the device would no longer work with any computer.  The Zune software would not even detect it and I would get a toast message that device driver could not be installed. 

Meet the Control+Alt+Delete of WP7.  With the phone turned off you have to hold volume down, camera key, and power until you get a message on the device stating “Are you sure you want to format? You must hold all three buttons until you see the screen below.  You then press the Windows key to format or back to cancel. 

This will reset the phone to the day you received it.

The soft reset option can be located under Settings –> About –> reset your phone.  Soft reset works for installing a microSD but when you remove it is possible that the phone may have relocated files from it’s internal memory to the card.  A hard reset will force it to put all files back on the internal memory.