Early adopters of Windows Phone 8 hardware are complaining that it reboots at random, up to several times a day, and that they're not being offered any prospect of a quick fix.

The complaints relate specifically to the HTC 8X and, to a lesser extent, Nokia's Lumia 920, with Windows Phone 8 locking up or randomly rebooting on both devices for no discernible reason. Forum users on Microsoft.com and WPCentral have been gathering examples in an attempt to narrow down the problem, but with limited success.

The forums run to seven pages, and are joined by those at Nokia where users report similar problems. Though it's certainly not hitting every Windows Phone 8 device it's annoying those it does hit.

Support staff from the three companies have reportedly been suggesting rebooting, removing the beta release of Skype and (in the case of Nokia) booting the phone without a SIM for ten minutes, then booting with the SIM back in again, which apparently worked for one user.

The problem isn't universal, though if reboots are intermittent and rare users may not be reporting them - unless it interrupts something one is doing then a reboot isn't very disruptive. Microsoft has spent decades teaching us that rebooting fixes almost everything, and since then the smartphone industry has tried to teach us not to judge the product we buy by what we get, as software improvements will be forthcoming shortly.

So far users are calling for a software fix, and many seem happy with their phones despite the instability, but Microsoft can't afford to regain a reputation for instability it's barely shaken off (Windows Vista casts a long shadow, on a wall already darkened by ME) so Redmond will no doubt be working hard on this. ®