To be dead honest, I'm kind of pi$$ed off at my BlackBerry right now. Yesterday, for the second time in two weeks, my BlackBerry Bold 9900 nuked itself on me. If you're not familiar with "nuking" (my term) or "bricking" (the more popular/standard term), it refers to the BlackBerry white screen of death. Instead of your BlackBerry booting up properly, something goes wrong. You might get a JVM or App Error message, the phone might go into an endless reboot cycle, or occassionally it'll just sit there blinking red lights with the display never really turning on. Whichever way it manifests itself, I consider it nuked or bricked. Until fixed, your BlackBerry is useless.
In my earlier days of BlackBerry ownership this happened fairly often. You could even make it happen at will if you installed an incompatible theme on your phone. With newer hardware and newer iterations of the BlackBery OS I found the problem to happen a lot less often -- only once did it happen to me on a BlackBerry 6 device -- and that was on the Torch 9800 when I first received my review unit that was on pre-release software.
Since buying my Bold 9900 I've found BlackBerry 7 to be pretty stable, but now for no good reason that I can ascertain, it's failed me twice. The first time was on my way to San Francisco for BlackBerry DevCon 2011. After touching down in Minneapolis to make my connection, I turned the radio back on my phone which was turned off for the flight. After five minutes of waiting and no emails coming in, I did a soft reset of the phone. JVM Error 517 emerged, which points to a corrupt file system. I had rebooted the phone recently with no errors, so don't think it was an error waiting to happen as a result of bad apps being installed. Maybe my 9900 just didn't like the thought of roaming fees and decided it would rather be bricked. Either way it made for an annoying day, and resulted me in borrowing a PC so I could reload the OS from my hotel room later that day.
DevCon made for a busy week as did last week playing catch up, so I honestly had not even installed one third party app since reloading the OS fresh. For two weeks I've done little more than use my 9900 for emails, phone calls, BBMs and texts. Then yesterday, shortly before heading out for lunch, upon trying to open my email messages I received an uncaught exception message and couldn't get into my inbox. I pulled the battery out of the phone this time, which usually fixes any bugs like this, and again was greated by a 517 error message. As I blog this, I'm in the process of reloading the OS on my phone.
Sending out a I bricked my BlackBerry message yesterday on twitter and talking to friends and colleagues, I'm really starting to wonder if BlackBerry 7 has some weird issues that allow it to brick a little easier than it should. I received quite a few tweets where people have also bricked their 9900s. And even on the Crack Team we've seen it happen more than it should. Also at DevCon, Shao128's 9900 went into an endless reboot cycle on him - though in that case we found a weird fix for it. I told him to pull out his SIM card and try again and we found that with no SIM card it rebooted it ok and fixed itself (maybe his 9900 was scared of roaming fees too?). Then yesterday, apparently at the exact same time that my 9900 bricked itself, so did Bla1ze's. Super weird. Super not cool.
Looking at our real time site analytics right now as I write this post, it becomes pretty obvious that a lot of people still suffer from bricked BlackBerry Smartphones on a daily basis. How can I tell? Because even though it was posted in 2007, this article on How to Reload the OS on your Nuked or BlackBerry is still the single most active page on CrackBerry.com. More eyeballs are looking at that page right now than any other article, page or thread on this site. It's a good validator of exactly why RIM needs to move off of the BBOS and onto BBX, ASAP.
Question of the Week: Have you bricked your BlackBerry 7 Smartphone yet? If so, let us know how it went down in the comments!
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dewey32399 Nov 1, 2011 at 3:50 pm
Hey Kevin,
Don't know if your still monitoring this thread but I've got a new issue. My 9900 has been working flawlessly while my girlfriends has been bricked twice. Today I go to use my phone and I'm getting this "sim not allowed" banner on the top of my screen. I reboot the phone and all is well for 2 hours and then "sim not allowed" pops up again.
Anyone else seeing this?
antony99 Nov 1, 2011 at 8:03 pm
My 9900 died when on charge overnight, it was perfectly fine before - then the next day it was dead - and could only light the red LED for 10 seconds. It appears to get a few seconds into start-up/booting and then die.
Tried everything, but as per all the numerous threads on this issue - it has to be sent off for repair.
I think it is related to 3rd party apps somehow, as my 1st 9900 carried across apps that were on my previous Torch 9800, and they did not work - which I later found was because they were not made for OS7.
My 2nd 9900 refused to install those older apps - so maybe someone at RIM knows that this issue is app related and they have made the BB now check for only OS7 compatible apps... who knows!
Surely RIM know that there is a serious issue - as they know how many bricked units are coming back to the carriers.
RIM know that they have a most passionate user base and several forums such as this one - but there has not been any news shared with the user community about what possibly causes the 9900 to brick itself, what can be done to avoid it - and what can be done to recover a dead unit.
My 2nd 9900 is now 14 days old, and each morning I have a little celebration that it is still working... :)
...oh, and I had to pay for the 2nd unit, as I bought from an overseas supplier - so no local warranty.
TomCanuck Nov 1, 2011 at 8:20 pm
mine's bricked 5 times on me since launch. for no good reason. do a reboot and BAM white screen of death even with no changes since my last reboot.
cwmont13 Nov 1, 2011 at 8:27 pm
I've also had brick / nuke problems with my BB as well. Woke up one morning to a bricked Torch 9800 after taking it off the charger. Don't know how or why it happened. I'm on AT&T running the current 600 version of their software. The only apps I have installed are BerryWeather, and the kids game hangman. Took me an hour or so to get it back up and running and so far it's been OK. Still troubles me that it happened and no explanation of why.
What concerns me more is the fact that RIM's QC seems to have gone by the wayside. I'm 14 months into a two year contract and I'm on my third 9800 due to QC related issues. Loose slider, buttons coming off, etc. My current 9800 has a slider so loose that the KB moves around so much it's impossible to use the touch KB due to the looseness. Even closed using the touch screen for everyday stuff, it's getting very hard due to the movement. I'm off my one year warranty so I'm stuck with it. Called AT&T spoke to supervisor regarding a replacement even though I was just off warranty by about 20 days. Told them it was my third replacement phone for QC issues and could they please move me to a different phone. They have done this for me in the past but refused to do it this time.
They suggested I do an insurance claim on the phone. I asked them why would I want to do that and have to pay $199.00 when the new 9810 was out for $49.00 on an upgrade? I can't qualify yet for an early upgrade, so I'm screwed. All this BS due to design QC issues with RIM. I've used BB's (pearl, curve, 9000, 9800) for years but now find myself looking elsewhere. RIM is just falling too far behind in the current market. My eyes ain't what they used to be and only the 9800 and 9810 have larger screens that I can actually see while wearing my glasses. No way I'm paying $199.00 for an insurance claim when I can go on CL and find another phone for half that.
I never thought I'd be one of those who posted that I'm done with BB, but I am. Picked up a Captivate cheap off CL because the owner was tired of the GPS failures and lag issues. I took it home, upgraded it to Gingerbread and now have no issues whatsoever with the phone. I'll miss the physical KB and most of all the notification LED on the BB but so far no issues with the Samsung phone even after loading it up with apps and the display is great.
I'll be keeping an eye on RIM and hoping they stay afloat, get the new OS and new phones out, and finally catch up with everybody else. Maybe by the time my contract's up, they will have their act together and I can move back to RIM. However for the time being, it's bye bye RIM.
SBMobile3 Nov 1, 2011 at 9:03 pm
So why is Kevin promoting these devices when they clearly SUCK?! The things you're describing are a '90's problem! It's 2011, almost 2012, why would anyone in their right mind want a device that causes so many problems, for no reason?? RIM has followed the "recipe" for disaster too long!!
vergastroka Nov 1, 2011 at 9:38 pm
Well I'm not the only one after all. Blackberry 9900 died after 29 days. Battery died until complete phone shutdown on a friday. When I got home a plugged it into de charger. Form saturday morning on until now (it's been 2 weeks) I've got a black screen with red light on and off. Ive lost 750$ because I bought my phone at amazon.com unlocked since I was traveling to south america, and the vendor only gave me warranty for 7 days since the product was delivered. Wrote to amazon and got the same answer. Can't express de frustration I'm feeling. I won't enter in the iOS BB OS war, but I will say that my iPhone 4 is working and gets me through the day. I'm a really loyal blackberry consumer from way back, but this is too much for me. 750 US DOLLARS FOR A PHONE THAT WORKS 29 DAYS! I jut can't tolerate this.
reds1111 Nov 1, 2011 at 10:38 pm
Happening to me very often since I got my pb.
When working thru Bridge, emails fine, calendar fine, contact fine, while working in wifi fine, bb fine.
However when I try to use certain apps (mapapp, magellan) thru my dataplan , my bb get the nuke, many people have to reinstall the OS but what I do is plug the bb to the charger and restart, it works all the time.
It could be gps chip, Bluetooth,...
by the way i have OS 5.0, i thought it was my old phone but i see it is affecting all the range of OSs.
The only reason i still use bb, is because of the PB/BB bridge - emails work perfect in pb
Thanks
Reds
hoppysport Nov 1, 2011 at 10:43 pm
Does anybody at RIM read Crackberry? They should because Crackberry is the best focus group that RIM could ever hope for. I ordered a Samsung Galaxy S2 tonight and will try it for 20 days. Think my third 9900 will last another 20 days before bricking? I very much doubt that.
txfabnet Nov 2, 2011 at 5:40 am
briked ! , last night y see y bb no batttery y plug and on morning , nothin on screen led red on and off and on and off ...
pull up battery and sim and memory card same ..
BB bold 9900 france
y go to my provider to change ....
retroboy#CB Nov 2, 2011 at 9:56 am
Thank you so very much for this tutorial! I had thought I had a really expensive paperweight with my 9930, now I have a smartphone back!
chaoticblissx Nov 2, 2011 at 1:54 pm
This has happened to me 4 times since picking up my new 9810. Error 102 everytime.
I have gotten in the habit now of doing daily backups of everything but honestly to spend an hour or two each time to reset everything up is getting annoying. I have tried all available OS versions for the device and it has happened on each one including the original carrier supported version that was loaded on the device.
Not sure if its a software bug or a hardware issue.....either way it is very annoying to say the least.
Agree that RIM needs to move towards BBX and fast!!!
msrb21 Nov 3, 2011 at 1:10 am
wa installing the .666 OS on my Torch 9800, but it failed, i downgraded to an older release, and cant even restore it to .600... So I sold my Torch...
Villain Nov 3, 2011 at 4:50 pm
only regrets.... selling my 9700 and 9800 and signing a contract for the 9900
smrdroid Nov 3, 2011 at 10:15 pm
Count me amongst the bricked 9930s. 3 weeks old Happened while replying to a text message. Continuous reboot cycles and JVM error messages. Going to exchange it tomorrow.
IslandGuy Nov 4, 2011 at 10:00 am
Blackberry 9850 on Sprint. My battery was run down so I placed the phone on the wall charger overnight. Woke up to a black screen and blinking led light. Nothing I did helped and could not restore the phone with BB software or BBsak. Took the phone back to Sprint and got it replaced thru my insurance. My wife was going to upgrade her 9850 to the 9930 but instead she migrated to the dark side. If the same thing happens to the replacement phone RIM will be losing another loyal customer.
flyingblackbeard Nov 4, 2011 at 1:31 pm
9930 on Sprint--Add me to the list. Just got a JVM 545 and I'm at work with no phone. Awesome. I have a Mac and have been reading about reloading the OS, and I hope I can do it with my Mac because I don't have access to a PC. This is my 3rd BB, and the first time I've had one brick.
amitsharma Nov 5, 2011 at 4:17 am
Unfortunately my device nuked on me during a call !!! I've upgraded to a 9900 from a Bold 3... Didn't even last 8 days... I've sent it to the Retailer to get a replacement handset...
rsjr72 Nov 5, 2011 at 7:22 pm
with all the time i spend on this site, it just reaffirms that the iPhone is the superior smartphone. the products just work and there are no games with OS updates.
nicocolton Nov 6, 2011 at 6:55 pm
Yeah, happened twice. First when I had uninstalled an App, App World was lagging, and then I did a Soft Reset (Alt+RShft+Del) and then it was Error 102. The next time was I uninstalled an App and didn't reboot for over a few hours, so then same thing.
AlienSlacker Nov 13, 2011 at 3:26 pm
I always have to wonder about all these phones supposedly being bricked. I abuse the living crap out of my 9900 and it hasn't so much as flinched. No reboot's , no battery heating, no hour glass pauses. It really does make me wonder.....just sayin.
jeremyn Nov 15, 2011 at 1:00 am
Only twice Kevin??? Amateur! I've seen the white screen of death reboot loop an average of twice a month since I've owned my piece of sh!t Bold 9650...usually after I find a new app I want to try and load it via App World. I've been convinced for years now that RIM has NO business building an OS with any sort of multimedia support (you ever notice how all the instability started when they added ringtone and mp3 support?), and as such have sworn I will not pay for any new devices or upgrades until they have replaced the BlackBerry OS completely with QNX. Let's just hope they don't find a way to eff up that OS....
By the way, as you may imagine, I've become quite ninja at using javaloader to excise the problem app so I don't have to spend another couple of hours reloading the OS and restoring my data and apps.
virafahvewalla Nov 19, 2011 at 7:27 am
i like to update my OS and have a habit of installing the leaked versions, as they come out before hand. when i was on os 7.0.0.440, one fine morning, after a night charge through the wall charger, my 9900 is dead. I find the red light blinking softly at intervals.
had my b*%~s in my mouth, as it was only the second week after buying this expensive phone. Fortunately a hard reset helped and it was back to normal.
Right 3 weeks after that, the same thing happens, the only difference, it was totally dead and "Resting in Peace" I tried each and every step and procedure, but no luck. At last had to hand it over to the vendor, who took 10 days to replace the same.
i possesed an iphone 4 before the BB and the reset was amazing. Bricked / nuked, no problem. keep the home and power buttons pressed for 15 minutes, the iphone would get into DFU mode, reinstall the OS and after the backup, its like it never happend. Love the BB, but, missed this feature of the iphone...
any recommendations to a total hard reset, without sending it back to the vendor???
miamimanu86 Nov 19, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Mine has bricked 4 times already! Thank God for the BlackBerry Protect and the backups I do weekly thanks to this!
jleung Nov 19, 2011 at 8:15 pm
mined bricked itself twice over 3 days!! luckily the 2nd time i had backed it up before it bricked and was able to get everything back. now i back up my phone every night as i fear the white screen will appear any minute i decide to reset my phone.
ejmonte Nov 19, 2011 at 8:36 pm
No bricks yet on my 9930 (sprint). I did have it once on my Tour, and once the battery was replaced with new, it has been fine and handed down to my son who hasn't said a word. I don't have any extra apps on the phone besides a few news media ones that were preset when I swapped all the info over from the Tour. I don't use the GPS (that's what the car is for), don't watch videos, and don't download anything that's not work related - text, emails, BBM, tasking pretty much 90% of what I use the BB for. Knock on some ash-wood for me, but I hope this is related to downloading apps and using a gps related program. My wifes older Curve (2 years+) is working just fine too and she links it up to her PlayBook all the time.
On a comparable note, who isn't frustrated with a Windows OS (frickin Vista!!) on their home computer which locks up frequently, or "not responding", or randomly shuts down? But I'm not running out of the house to buy a new computer every time that happens or write to Bill Gates. I know, it sucks, but if you love BB, have patience, if you don't, good luck with your new phone. (I tried a EVO, returned it after the inability to sync email). Look at the bigger picture. The more technology based EVERYTHING is becomming, the more sensitive and important the littlest "bit" is in the digital world. You drop one bit, and everything goes to... well, you get it. You think an iPhone is better? Or a Droid? They've all got issues. I deal with the idiosyncrosies of the BB because I love my BB.... same way I deal with the stupid Windows PC on my desk.
Thank you, have a great day.
bman5150 Nov 21, 2011 at 10:28 pm
I waited patiently with no contract for months so I could go back to BB where I felt I should have never left. I got my phone on day 1 (9930) at Verizons Website. The first phone was awesome until I stated talking to people on it. They all complained I echoed. The second phone came via warranty and it was awesome. Then I started talking to people, it echoed too. The third phone echoed too but I learned if I turned the volume down it wasnt as bad except now I had trouble hearing people I talked to. I dealt with it. Friday night 18th of Novemeber I put the phone on the charging pod, went to sleep. Wake up and grab phone but wait, it's not on (I program it to shut off at 12 and turn on at 6AM. So I turn it on and its just a blinking red light. I do what every BB user does when there is a problem, pull the battery. Nothing. I put it down to deal with my kids and came back later and it was on. Mystery. Phone seemed to work fine all day Saturday and Sunday with hour glasses which I havent really had with this phone before. Sunday night I put the phone on the charging pod and this morning same thing, but it never came back. I went to the Verizon store and they can't help and they don't keep warranty phones in the store anymore. I call the warranty line and they ran me through what I had alredy done and nothing. So, My fourth M-effing phone since August 15th will be here tomorrow. I missed an appointment with a client today and will miss another tomorrow because I cant get their info out of my "business" phone. RIM, I am sorry to even say this because I have been a backer for so long, but its time to merge or something. Sell the tech to another carrier to make a superphone, but stop selling junk. I happened to back up on Thursday so I wont lose much data, but I lost a client (at least one) and that hurts a lot. I have read every post about this Bricking issue and the only common denominator I see is the charging "pod" versus just plugging in? Could it be that simple????????? I had to activate my Droid incredible today so I had a phone at least for a day, wow, the new mobile Facebook is amazing on Droid, RIM I would have never known that if you had your **** together.Made an incredible mistake once.
JRCaesar Nov 22, 2011 at 12:16 am
Mine died before you posted this Oct. 31 story, but I just saw the link on Information Week and realized that, no, I'm not alone!
The nice Verizon agent on the phone tried to walk me through the software reboot, but of course Desktop didn't recognize that the device had a problem with the OS, so nothing could be done. When I went to the Verizon store as counseled, they told me they don't have OS 7 in store to reboot my device - something about a security issue.
I will note that they expedited shipping me a new phone, so I was only phoneless for 3 days. (Saturday shipping error - Fed Ex's fault.)
New one seems to be working fine ... so far.
stew12341 Nov 22, 2011 at 3:46 pm
my 9900 nuked about a week ago , i went to sleep with my phone on charge as usual , when i woke up NOTHING but a blinking red light, Obviously after researching on crackberry forums i realized that my device was nuked , i follwed the steps ie: apploader to reload the OS i get to stage 3 and i get this message "application loader was unable to connect with your device. Please re-conect your device , enter the password(if required), and click retry" my device does have a passcode on it but it asks me to put that in on stade 1 and then doesnt give me the option agin when this message appears , i cannoit get passed this stage someone help me as i realy dont wanna send my phone away.
fxrudys Jan 13, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Great, now my turn to get bricked :'( on my 9810 AT&T. it happened at 2 am, when i did caps + alt + del (the soft restart) since i ran out of memory which appear oftenly the famous ticking-circling clock (62 MB of normally 180MB)
the error display was JVM 517, n did several reset and battery pull-off still no good. and the bad thing is, i purchased this with no warranty since i bought it in ebay in nov 2011.
i asssumed this happened because i just install the BBM new version, 6.1.xxx which can choose the buble colour for each BBM contact. and this is my 2nd restart since the 1st restart after I finished installed it.
and i found this:
BlackBerry Handheld Software v7.0.0.1672 (All Languages)
Package Version: 7.0.0.1672
Consisting of:
Applications: 7.0.0.353
Software Platform: 5.0.0.544
File name: 9810AllLang_PBr7.0.0_rel1672_PL5.0.0.544_A7.0.0.35 3_O2_UK.exe
File size: 229.24MB
Note: The Software Platform and Applications version numbers can be found under Options-About screen on the handheld.
should you all think I should reload the OS, or do you have better idea since i dont think i have warranty since I bought it when i was in LA, now i am in indonesia, wkwkwkwk
so stressful now.... sigh
need your kindly comments, thx
chefcuervo Feb 3, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Why is nobody answering with solutions!!! My BB 9900 worked for 3 WEEKS, i paid $750 at an online retailer to get this phone, and since I live in South America there is no way for me to return it, until my next trip to the US. And the worst part is that i did nothing to the frikin phone, the battery simply drained completely one day and so I charged it, fell asleep and to my surprise the next day I woke up, Ihad a shinny paper weight. I've searched online for a solution, tried to reload a new OS, but NOTHING works. Is RIM serious with these products. I finally gave up, and got myself a Samsung Galaxy SII....which is an amazing phone btw. I'm just waiting for someone to come up with a solution to this bs from RIM so I can sell it ASAP.
samhawkins Feb 19, 2012 at 9:43 am
I have nuked my blackberry yayyyyyy, and orange said they would replace my blackberry 9810 about 3-4 months ago and still haven't so i am stuck here with a nuked blackberry and no idea what to do....
Josh_Brenneman Mar 29, 2012 at 2:07 pm
I have had this happen in the past with an old Bold (8900?) forgive my ignorance, as I'm not very tech-savvy.
I just purchased a Blackberry Bold 9900 in January and prior to absolutely bricking (no power up other than an intermittent red flashing LED) I was having issues with the time and date displayed on my device.
I plugged the phone in before bed and woke up in a panic because my bb alarm never woke me up. I have contacted support, as I purchased this phone through RIM directly by way of the Employee Purchase Program. I did this thinking it would be the better option, as opposed to signing another 3 yr contract with Rogers - but now I feel like I made a poor decision.
I am currently losing out on business (self-employed artist/designer) because the old bold I have will not power up either. Tech support has been very slow getting back to me as well.
Kind of stuck in Limbo here... forgive me for my rant - really had to vent this since there is no direct number to call to complain about this....
Thanks for your informative posts :)
faithabquina21 Apr 1, 2012 at 4:44 am
This happened to me also. I charged my blackberry bold 9930 for about 2 hrs. After that it wont turn on, it just flashes this red light. I tried to wipe with BBSWAK, apploader, BB desktop manager and JLcmder.. none of these worked.. Please help me.. =(
deulikist May 29, 2012 at 1:12 pm
it just happened to me, i was sending a picture to a friend on bbm when suddenly it started lagging so i decided to soft reset my blackberry. then the JVM Error 517 message popped up. been soft resetting and hard resetting it since but to no avail. :(( will try to reset the os when i get back home on my desktop perhaps?
belebek Nov 23, 2012 at 10:35 am
help please .. 9800 blank screen with a blinking red LED.
how to backup contacts and bbm?
I have never had any previous backup ..
Thank you.
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