920 lumia goes no further than initial Nokia scree...

Question

HELP! My phone was reating oddly while I was busy with an App (vivino). Long story however:
1. made a backup of my files to the laptop.
2. went to settings / info reset factory settings
3. confirmed reset.
Got 2 cogs turning, 2,5 hours later still 2 cogs turning. have almost nothing installed on phone, a few songs, but memory use is not even 20%. Perhaps this was my mistake but I figured this is too long, there is something amis.
Tried reboot with volume and power buttons, no effect
held all three, vibrated and got only nokia screen but thats it,
Took out sim card after about 30 mins, and tried again as above.
1 hour later tried all three buttons volume / power / camera after vibrate released power and after 5 seconds the other two.
it reboots but stays on the black screen with NOKIA.
What else can I try? PC does not find phone, guess because it is not actually started up. Had the issue a couple of months ago that battery was flat so wouldnt start, 30 mins plugging in and out and pressing buttons it came back to life, but think this is an unrelated issue. 

Answer 1

Ok I had this same problem over the weekend, aka the spinning gears of death. After trying many different reboot methods and being stuck in factory reset for a day with nothing working. Finally I tried doing a combination of methods together and it work. Here’s what I did.
Phone on (showing spinning gears of death)
Fully charged
Took Sim card out
I logged into find my phone and erased my phone
https://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/my
Let it sit for 1 hour then turned it off
Press and hold the Volume down & Power buttons until the phone vibrates then release the power button but keep pressing the volume down key for approximately 10 seconds until you see a low battery on the screen.
If you don’t get the low batt and you get the Nokia lego then
press the following buttons in this order;
Volume UP
Volume DOWN
POWER
Volume DOWN.
Your phone will now automatically reboot and try again till you get the low batt
When the low batt shows up do nothing, it will turn off by itself
Let sit for 1 hour and turn back on
Press and hold the Volume down & Power buttons until the phone vibrates then release the power button but keep pressing the volume down key for approximately 10 seconds until you see a low battery on the screen.
Plug your phone into the charger when you see the low batt
If you don’t get the low batt and you get the Nokia lego and go back to the spinning gears of death then
press the following buttons in this order;
Volume UP
Volume DOWN
POWER
Volume DOWN.
Plug your phone into the charger when you see the low batt but not till you see it
Now press the following buttons in this order;
Volume UP
Volume DOWN
POWER
Volume DOWN.
Your phone will now automatically reboot it will show the spinning gears again
 but within 10 mins it will start up as a new device.