Restore contacts on Xperia Z

[patron]

My C6606 Xperia Z was acting buggy after the 4.2.2 update.  I had used PC Companion before, and saw that it had stated that you can use this tool to reinstall the operating system if the phone was having issues.

I backed it up on my PC as it had stated.

I went ahead and reinstalled the OS through PC Companion.  Went smooth.

Went to retore my contacts/data/email and now after countless tries it will not restore through PC Companion.

I searched all over and found a post that it will not update if I have Windows 8.1.  Win 7/8 should be OK.

So I went ahead and purchased a new hard drive to load Windows 8.

Went ahead to try to restore using PC Companion, and same thing.  As soon as PC Companion goes to restore, the window closes and the phone reboots and PC Companion is back to the beginning restore window.

I called Sony twice.  The first time, I called about 15 minutes before they closed.  The rep said he will send me instructions via email on how to rename the extension on my PC backup and that I can just move my backup files to the phone using a file commander program.  I told him that I get my emails immediately and he confirmed that it was in a queue and it would take 2-3 minutes to arrive. 

It didnt arrive.  Basically he put me off so he could go home at closing time.  Pretty upset at this.

The next day I called again and another rep was able to send me some instructions to relabel the extension of my backup to .zip or .rar and then I could uncompress it and manually send it to my phone.  But the rep told me "we are not a computer support company, so you will have to figure out on how to move the files on your own."

So I did that.  I stored it in my SD card.  There were no instruction on what to do after that.  I went to the internal storage on the Xperia and found some folders that had the same titles like Android but the files inside were not anything close to the ones I had uncompressed.  I tried to copy 5 files as a test to see if it would work, but nothing happened.

So, now I would like to know how to finish the manual restore using my PC backup files that are uncompressed.

I've spent several days on this and pretty frustrated.  I have no contacts info in my phone, and I need to call my vendors because I run a business.

Of course after I go through all of this I find out I should have saved my contacts in Google or better yet backed it up using the restore app in the phone.

[JakeSully]

i got a solution for you, download windows 7 or use windows 7 disc then download virtualbox install it on your pc and then once done and you got windows 7 installed on a virtual machine inside virtual box then boot it up also copy backup file that pc companion created to a USB stick connect it to pc so windows 7 in virtual box will detect it and boot it up once done setup pc companion on that as well and copy backup file into correct location and program shall detect the backup and then from there try with restore hopefully that will go well and backup will be restored to your phone

TIP: next time you decide to re-install your phone do backup on phone and from pc companion since using backup app in phone will store the backup into your SD card so you can do a restore after re-installation

[patron · Accepted solution]

Apparently this is a known bug and has been happening for over a year now.

I was able to get my contact list back without setting up a VM.  I was actually about to before I made my first post, but decided to vent off first here and searched around and found this:

http://talk.sonymobile.com/t5/Xperia-S-SL-acro-S/PC-Companion-Backed-Up-SMS-Contacts-etc-but-failed-...

all i needed was the phone contents and text messages, so i just left the first two items checked and cleared the other boxes when restoring. 

those two things restore no problem

the email is imap, so i just put my settings in and it reloads.  just have to reinstall my apps again.