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I accidentally removed my 64 gb class 10 micro sd memory card from my Windows Phone 8.1 Microsoft Lumia 535 without properly going to Storage Sense > SD Card and clicking "remove SD card". I was in a rush and only powered off the phone before physically removing the card. I store most of my apps on the memory card. I turned the phone back on and of course I could not open those apps. I turned the phone off again, put the memory card back in and turned it back on, thinking that everything would be alright...

But now the apps stored on the memory card won't open. The icons for them on the start screen do not show anymore. Some just show the name and don't open. Others show @D:\WPSystem\Apps{xxx... or @{Microsoft.xxx... Swiping right from the start screen, those apps are all missing their icons, most just show a grey box and don't open.

If I now "safely remove" the card, the icons are back to normal although grayed out and the apps are unavailable. If I then restart the phone or actually take out the card and put it back in, the problem is still there where the icons/names are missing and the apps don't open.

Has this happened to anyone else before? Does anyone have any ideas? Is there a way to fix this without hard resetting the phone and formatting the memory card?

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  • Can you reinstall the apps? – RareNCool May 19 '15 at 20:15
  • I was able to uninstall an app. I tried installing a new app to the SD card and it never got past the pending/downloading stage. I cancelled the app download, and in the store, it says the app is "owned" but not "installed". I could not find a "reinstall" option on the phone. I logged into windowsphone.com and clicked reinstall for an app I had already installed, and it said "Contacting your phone" and then "Congratulations! The app should begin downloading in a few moments." but nothing seemed to happen on my phone and I still can not open the app I tried to reinstall. – theMaxx May 19 '15 at 21:49
  • Turning off the phone properly (i.e. press Power, swipe down, wait for the screen to go out) should allow safe removal of the card; I've done that before. I still recommend you unmount ("Safely Remove") the card first, but it shouldn't be needed. A sudden shutdown (holding the power button for a while, or removing the battery from a running phone) could corrupt the SD card though, yeah. The way the OS encrypts app data on the card seems to make it hard to work with; I've had troubles with the WPSystem folder on an otherwise-safely-removed card too. – CBHacking Nov 20 '15 at 3:25
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Try using the disk checker tool in Windows. This may fix filesystem errors, otherwise the safest approach is to remove the apps folder and reinstall your apps from the store.

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First, put the memory card in a pc with a card reader and check if there are any problems in reading it. Else format the memory card. You can install the apps after you have uninstalled them (in this case formatted the memory).

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    I did put the memory card in my PC and it said that there were problems reading it. I could still copy my pictures, files, etc. to my computer to back them up...and then tried to recover some files from my apps...mainly my note taking app. But I could not recover my notes, since all the app data files were encoded for security reasons. Bummer for my scenario, but good in general I guess. I ended up formatting the card and resetting the phone and starting over. I still think that there should have been a way to repair the "improperly removed" memory card without having to start over. – theMaxx May 28 '15 at 19:10

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