Saturday, May 5, 2012

Windows 7.5 Mango and Gmail, "Attention Required" error

I just ran into this while trying to add my dads Gmail account to his new Nokia 900 Windows 7.5 phone. Spent ten minutes thinking I was using the wrong password. It turns out that Gmail implements some sort of Captcha on their authentication (probably only happens when you add your Gmail account to new device/phone). You won't see this when logging in through a browser, and nothing really tells you why authentication failed. Either way you must disabled it when adding the Gmail account to your new phone.

To do this go to this link (in a browser) and sign in with your account :
https://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha

I'm not 100% on this, but I believe it temporarily disabled the Captcha requirement and let's the device/phone authenticate. I'm assuming once the account is added to the device/phone the Captcha is no longer required.

I still haven't figured out why one of my dads Gmail accounts actually had this authentication protection, but the other didn't.

To give credit, I found this information on this guys blog:
http://jonathanmumm.com/tech-it/fix-windows-7-phone-gmail-attention-required-error/

Thanks Jonathan Mumm, you saved me a few gray hairs.

1 comment: