Restore Fails - Is my data lost?

[dworoberts]

Hi - proud owner of a new Sony Xperia S here.

I decided to reset to factory settings and start again with my 'phone. I saved all of my pictures and videos, and used PC Companion to back up my 'phone contents. There were no errors or problems during the backup process.

Having restored my 'phone and updated the software, I cannot now "restore" from the backup that I made for the following items:

- Contacts and call log

- Text messages

- Bookmarks

- Settings

- Other

PC Companion has stored a ".dbk" file on my hard drive. I'm only really concerned about saving my old text messages.

I have tried running a "restore" a few times now, but PC Companion reports that "The restore of this content has failed" for all of the items that I have listed above.

Is there any way to save my 'phone data? I have not rooted or played with the bootloader or anything else. The 'phone is the same as it came out of the box.

Any advice would be great - thanks for reading.

[Nabeel]

may i know what all you wish to restore ?

[dworoberts]

Hi Nabeel! I just want to restore my text messages from the backup file. I must have "reset" and "repaired" my 'phone a dozen times today, trying to get the restore to work properly!

For some reason, every time I try to run the restore, the PC Companion shows a little yellow triangle and says "The restore of this content has failed". The backup process went fine, and the ".dbk" file seems to contain all of my old messages. I really don't know why PC Companion isn't able to perform the restore.

If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know!

[Nabeel]

oops 
first of all would start with a suggestion, always use apps to backuup and not to depend on the pc companion

here you go http://talk.sonymobile.com/message/92735

now about restoring. Its quite a difficult task to get back all the stuff backed up by pc companion,if it fails to restore bak in the very first attempt ,, though its not impossible to get it back

hope for the best

just backup that original dbk file
1- http://dotwhat.net/dbk/10198/

2-http://hpanswers.blogspot.in/2009/03/sony-ericsson-pc-suite-40-backup-and.html

also boot pc in safe mode or turn off antivirus and firewall

[dworoberts]

Hi Nabeel - thanks for the information.

I tried installing the older SE PC Suite, but it won't recognise the Sony Xperia S (maybe it's too new), so that won't work to recover my text messages.

Frankly, if you open it as a ".zip" file, the ".dbk" file is a complete mess. I've tried running a program and app called "MyPhoneExplorer" but it won't work with ".dbk" files. Is there any way to convert the text messages to a more useful format?

It's very annoying that Sony software claims to backup your information and then refuses to restore it.

Not impressed.

[Nabeel]

okh do one thing
name that to .zip and extract it
transfer all the extracted content to sd card( to your mobile) in one folder.
now, use various apps present in google play( for restoring messages) , hope one recognises the sms back up file and restores

i don't have a sample .DBK to test it... otherwise would have tested on my own

[dworoberts]

Okay - I make absolutely no sense of this at all!

After a whole Saturday of failed restores, I gave it one last shot in PC Companion before dinner...

It worked!

Quite frankly, I haven't the faintest idea what I did differently on the 1000th time from the last 999, but - if it's any use - I was running MyPhoneExplorer in the background. God knows what role that might have played (since the desktop and phone clients don't support ".dbk"!)

Anyway, happy ending! Thanks everyone for your help. I'll use Google's backup feature next time!

I'm starving so I'm off to make dinner. Enjoy your weekend!

[Raam1117]

This worked.. crazy..