BlackBerry® Bold™

[violindave]

My wife has a Blackberry Bold 9700. She just asked me to pick up a new MS-1 battery as the one she was using [about a year old] was losing its charge fast. We put the new battery in which seems fine. Today she had real trouble getting it to boot up. She had to take the battery out and put it back in and after about 4 times it finally rebooted and went through a whole sort of intialization process. It seems to be working ok now. But she cannot afford to be without this phone or have it not boot up as most of her business is by phone

She thinks it is something wrong with the phone itself. Is there a way to check this out if it is the phone? Can a Blakberry store help or an AT&T store which is our provider? We have had to replace her blackberry every few years due to something weird going wrong with it. As I said it gets used a lot!

Would appreciate any suggestions. Also is there any way to actually get phone support for the Blackberry or live chat etc? Do you have to pay per instance of support for phone support?

thanks in advance!

Dave

[sdgardne]

Hi and Welcome to the Community!!

FYI -- this site is a user-to-user community, not a channel for any formal support from, escalation to, nor communication with BlackBerry. All formal support starts with the carriers, authorized service centers, or original place of purchase -- depending on the issue, the place for support will change. But contractually, BlackBerry cannot, for free, offer any front line support...that is the responsibility of others, who can escalate up to BlackBerry if necessary. That is how the support model works, and all parties are bound to it. Plenty of debates exist as to if that's a good system or not...but, to me, those discussions are moot and purely academic.

There is something called incident support, but it costs to just ask the initial question, since you are bypassing the contract you signed upon purchase. If you wish to investigate that, you can review it here:

• http://us.blackberry.com/support/programs/technical/incident.html

Given your description, replacing the battery "every few years" does not sound at all unreasonable. Like all technology items, nothing lasts forever, nor do batteries. The greater the use, the lower the total lifetime usefulness of the battery. So, that does not sound like any sort of problem.

Concerning the other issues, I recommend that you attempt to boot into Safe Mode:

• KB17877 How to start a BlackBerry smartphone in Safe Mode

It may take you multiple attempts to get the ESC key sequence (press/release/hold) correct, so be patient. When successfully into Safe Mode, then watch carefully.

If the behavior does not return, then think carefully...what happened just before this behavior started? A new app? An update? A Theme? Something else? Think carefully as the smallest change could be causal...and attempt to undo whatever that was.

If the behavior does return, then an OS reload may be in order. Like all computing devices, BBs suffer from memory leaks and sometimes even OS corruption. Cleanly reloading the OS can help with that. If you need instructions for that, we can provide it.

Good luck and let us know!

[violindave]

thanks! I found out more info: she had used the new battery which had charged over night. But after a couple of hours it started to run out. So she put the old battery which had caused trouble in so as to charge that as a backup. The phone went dead when she did this. She then put the new battery back in and had a lot of trouble booting it back up. Had to take the new battery out and back in 4 times and then it finally booted up. ATT chat line pretty much said to do a master reset and restore. Make me very very nervous. if that doesn't work she says replace the device

[sdgardne]

Well, while I agree with perhaps what they've recommended, I'd not jump to that quite yet. Rather...with the brand new battery, first please try this sequence...note that, throughout the entire 4h15m process, your BB must remain connected to a known-good wall charger (not PC USB):

1. With the battery inside, connect your BB to the wall charger
2. Leave it alone for 2 hours, no matter what the LED or the display does
3. Remove the battery
4. Wait 15 minutes
5. Insert the battery
6. Wait another 2 hours, no matter what the LED or the display does

This has been known to "kick start" some BBs.

---

It is also possible that your battery or BB has experienced a problem...to test, this sequence is needed:

1. Obtain a known good and already fully charged additional battery...use it in your BB and see what happens
2. Obtain access to a known good and identical BB...use your battery in it and see what happens

The results of this will indicate if it's your BB or your battery that has the problem. Note that "known good" and "new" are not necessarily the same thing...while rare, a "new" battery certainly can be defective. Rather, finding someone with an identical BB that does not have these problems provides the best test -- trade batteries and see what happens.

---

Likewise, the Safe Mode I gave you earlier may yet provide something useful.

Good luck and let us know!

[violindave]

Great will try this out. Once again thanks for the help!!

[sdgardne]

You are welcome...please do let us know the results!