Fix: Unable to Downgrade to Windows Phone 8.1 Using Windows Recovery Tool

We’re close to the release of Windows 10 Mobile RTM (at least we think we’re close), and a lot of Windows Phone 8.1 users already switched to the Preview of the new mobile OS. Since Windows 10 is almost ready for the commercial use, its Preview version is very close to the full version, as it features minimum of bugs. But some people may decide to, for some reason, downgrade their Windows Phone devices to Windows Phone 8.1.

For all users who want to downgrade their phones, Microsoft provided a handy tool, called Windows Phone Recovery tool, which allows you to easily downgrade your system to Windows Phone 8.1. But one user complained on Microsoft Community forums that he’s unable to use Windows Phone Recovery tool to downgrade his phone, as it shows him a “Software package not available for this phone” error.

Something obviously went wrong with Windows 10 Mobile Preview, so it stopped to be compatible with the recovery tool. It’s probably because updates weren’t applied properly, but we cannot confirm that. Anyway, we found out that the only solution for this problem is resting the phone. After the reset, factory settings will be applied, and you should be able to downgrade your phone to Windows Phone 8.1 without any problems.

In case you don’t know how to reset your phone, follow these instructions (Since you probably can access phone’s settings, there’s no need to perform a ‘physical’ restart, so we’re going to do this the easier way):

1. Go to Settings, and open System
2. Go to About, and tap on Reset your phone
3. Wait until the process is finished

After the phone is reset, try to downgrade it using Windows Recovery tool again, and it should work properly. Since you already planned to downgrade your phone, I assume you already created a backup of your data. If you didn’t, don’t forget to do that.