Fix: Marketplace is not available in your country / region

This is a heart breaking message which is shown on Windows Phone in the countries where “market place” is not launched. Fortunately, this service runs on your live id which you used while initial configuration and not the country you live in.

Zune.net is responsible for this message and if you are logging into your Zune account using live id, you will find that your contact address is pointing to a address / country where the market place is not yet launched. Now the problem here is that you cant change the country once you have created the account. Zune team is definitely aware of this and this is enforced due to some policy issues.

So, what’s the fix? Create a new live id, Hard reset your phone and configure all over. Well there is nothing to panic. All you have to do is take a backup of your phone and hardware reset it and then create a new live id which you should remember to be created with any country address which has market place open and functioning. My advice would be to go for US address. Ensure that you create a Zune.net account with the same live id and you can skip the credit card verification if you don’t want to. Now you have to do is hard reset your phone and configure all over where you will have to provide a new id.

The steps are simple

  • Backup your phone.
  • Create New live id.
  • Create a Zune account with a country address where marketplace is available.
  • Hard reset your phone.
  • Configure your phone with new id.
  • Restore the backup.
  • Add the previous live id if needed.

I have personally tried this and it has worked and also have set up the same for lot of my friends. However please be informed that neither Microsoft or your phone service provider endorse this process and I wont entertain any damage caused to your phone / data during this process.

Fix: Marketplace is not available in your country / region

9 thoughts on “Fix: Marketplace is not available in your country / region

  1. Thank for the advice but I have a small question. How can i backup my phones? there is a problem with the HTC Devices and i had to work hard in order to properly arrange my contacts. prior resseting the phone i need a full backup, including text msgs, settings and contacts. do you know any application that wll allow me to do all this?

  2. Petros, if you restore your backup, it will take back to the same situation you backed up. So yes your live id will also get changed (if that is what you are planning to).

    Zune is the only application your phone talks to and if it can be done in Zune, then yes you can.

  3. I followed all your steps but its still showing ‘Marketplace is not available in your country’ I have HTC HD7 & my country is India. WHat to do now?

    1. Sapan, please check what is your billing address in zune. India has market place open so you should be able to use unless you set the zune address to some country where the facility is not yet available.

  4. Hello, I’m from Nigeria and anytime I open the marketplace, it shows the same msg. I want to know if the marketplace is available in my country.

  5. I try it and it work tanx dude im from Nigeria and my country is not Available so i have 2 change it to U.S nw i’m enjoying my phone

  6. How do I back up music, video and pictures. I can’t find any backup button on my phone to even back up my contacts. Its an HTChd7 windows phone

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