magicJack and magicJack Plus Support, Reviews, FAQs and Hacks

City Builder · MagicJack Contributor Joined: 04 Oct 2008 Posts: 70

I'm sure this is a lost cause, however I need to ask since there were contacts and numbers in the MJ contact list that were ONLY kept in the MJ list and not on any scrap of paper even.

During the last upgrade of the MJ software, we had issues and couldn't get the upgrade. I webbed to the tech support and they had me "format" the MJ drive listed in my computer. At the time it didn't dawn on me that MJ might actually store my contacts on that virtual drive (one would think they'd put it somewhere safe maybe).

So afterwards, we finally got MJ to upgrade (1 day later), and so now all the contacts in the contacts list are gone.

Im sure this is from the formatting, but is there any possibility of getting back my old contact list?

Thanks,

MJ Problem Solver · MagicJack User Joined: 14 Aug 2009 Posts: 34

Email me your telephone number and I will try to walk you through the process of getting your contacts back if possible.
Barry

conniemadagain · Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 1:21 am Post subject: Re: There may be a way

City Builder · MagicJack Contributor Joined: 04 Oct 2008 Posts: 70

Yes, I would prefer to be told here, Im not one for giving out my MJ phone number to anybody I dont know. If that is the only way, then I'll have to wait and hope someone else comes along that might be able to help without needing me to give out my MJ number.

Magicjacktechsupport · MagicJack Contributor Joined: 21 Aug 2009 Posts: 58

MJ Problem Solver · MagicJack User Joined: 14 Aug 2009 Posts: 34

I use XP with SP3 ( Vista or Windows 7 may be a little different)

1) Double click "my computer"
2) Look under the category "devices with removable storage"
3) There will be two Magic Jack drives ( if you are experiencing problems...you will see only one, but the second one is there...it is just not labeled Magic Jack...it may be called drive E: or F: or G: etc)
4) You are looking for the Magic Jack drive that is formattable....right click on each drive to see which is formattable (DO NOT FORMAT)To make sure you have the correct drive you can right click...go down to properties...capacity of the drive should be 17.5 MB (once you do this one time then you will know which drive to go to)
5) Double click the 17.5 MB capacity Magic Jack drive
6) Then double click on the folder Magic Jack
7) There you will see a folder labeled addressbook.XML
8) To copy this folder...the easiest way is to drag it to "my documents"
9) or you can drag to your desktop
10) It will not remove the addressbook.xml file from the folder...it will only copy it.....
Hope this helps everyone..........

The following reply on this thread from magicjacktechsupport is very much incomplete...THIS WILL NOT WORK !
"You will need to paste the addressbook file to the same location after upgrading your magicjack . Then restart your magicjack and contacts list will show up . If it does not work then unplug your magicjack and replug after 2 minutes."

City Builder · MagicJack Contributor Joined: 04 Oct 2008 Posts: 70

Honestly, somebody needs to tell Tech support that before advising a customer to reformat their MJ drive, to walk them through backing up the address book.

I wish I had known before hand that MJ doesn't keep the addressbook stored in My Documents where IT SHOULD BE STORED to preserve it in case of something like this.

I've lost some contacts that I may never get back unless some of my old high school chums should happen to call me up sometime in the future. Granted only a couple business contacts were lost but they're all retrievable simply by dialing 411, but many of my friends that were on my contacts list were the only place it was stored. I take partial blame however for not physically writing down the names and numbers on paper somewhere. Never the less Tech support should be repremanded supremely for instructing me to format the MJ drive before asking me if I wanted to back up the address book. Shame, shame on them.

With this little snafu, and the lack of a consistant quality connection (i.e. havn't been able to reliably use a fax machine on this connection since I got MJ), I'm really leaning towards not renewing my subscription in the next couple months and going with somebody else as my primary. And while Im sure that one less subscriber means nothing to them, I'd be sure to be as vocal as possible about my distaste for MJ should it come to that.

Sorry, rant over.

MJ Problem Solver · MagicJack User Joined: 14 Aug 2009 Posts: 34

Tech support is following a script based on the problem described....I am sure they do not know what they are doing when they tell someone to format their Magic Jack.....

Sweettarte3 · MagicJack Newbie Joined: 22 Aug 2010 Posts: 2

Here is my chat with customer support. I have not tried the email they gave me, but I will in a few minutes. I hope this information may help someone, if not everyone fight back!

Evil or Very Mad

City Builder · MagicJack Contributor Joined: 04 Oct 2008 Posts: 70

I guess I've been lucky since they moved the information to the server as mine has remained which is good since I went and reinstalled Windows XP on my laptop that is used only for the magic jack and once again, it never occured to me to make backups of that information.

It's like the video games that have the online registration/activation. When I am reinstalling Windows, the last thing on my mind is that I should uninstall those games that have that online activation so that I don't lose an activation slot, and as such not something I think about with regards to MJ when I reformat and add a fresh copy of XP onto the laptop.

Honestly, I'd be really surprised if they don't have a backup copy somewhere of the information that they pulled off all of our MJ's when they switched to storing it on the server, I mean WTH, if their servers hdd's die, they don't have backups of the information that we are storing in our contact list?

Usually, it's only fly by night organizations that wouldn't make a backup of their customers data unless they are totally incompetent, which I guess might be the case if they don't have a backup that they can pull the data off of to restore to your MJ number.

Sorry to here you lost it When I lost mine a year ago, I got back maybe 50% of them by my friends calling me, the other 50% make up other friends, and some clients that I worked with in the past that I couldn't just 411 to get the number, although there were some that I could, if I could remember their company names.

Icaniam · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 10:31 pm Post subject:

I have two magic jacks. One used with a Windows 7 OS and the otther used with a XP OS. I only lost the information that was on the Windows 7 system.

magicJack and magicJack Plus Support, Reviews, FAQs and Hacks

Lost Contacts after "Support" had me format the MJ