Sometimes, phones tend to freeze unexpectedly or simply need to be wiped to factory settings. There can be many solutions for such an issue, but the easiest (albeit harsh) way to get the device back to a reusable state is by doing a hard reset. Except the freezing issue, a hard reset can be used if you’ve forgotten the phone’s password or you wish to sell the phone and wipe all the data.

It is suggested that you hard reset only as a last resort. Here is how to do a soft reset on your Lumia phones instead –

1)  Keep the volume down button and power button pressed until the phone vibrates thrice.

If this doesn’t work for you, you might want to rely on a hard reset.

Warning – Before you do anything, make sure you have created backup for all the data on your Lumia device.

1)  Turn off your Nokia Lumia device.

2)  Keep the volume down, power and the camera button pressed until the phone vibrates. When it does, release the power button but keep the other two pressed for 5 seconds.

3)  Now, navigate your phone from the homescreen to the Settings option.

4)  Click on About.

5)  Click on the “reset your phone” button at the bottom and press “yes” to confirm.

6)  Attach the phone to your computer to resync all your music, pictures and videos through Zune.