I just went trough a couple of hours of trying to get my BlackBerry Curve (8310) syncing again with our BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) and Exchange Server 2003.
The device was not being synced for some time now, so I did a complete reset of the device and also upgraded to OS 4.5. At the same time, we also updated to the latest BES release 4.1.6 which was released on July 17th 2008.
Now, the problem that I was facing is that the BlackBerry could not start the “Enterprise Activation” at all. After calling our Telco provider to make sure they have activated all services and redouble checked with them, I was left to resolve the issue with our server.
Wading trough the logs (the one with the “MAGT” is the one you need to look at) I found the following lines about the device trying to connect:
“…GetDeviceId() did not return a PIN…”
So, it seams that the BES server does not recognize the device or can not read the PIN. After countless of hours wading trough the BlackBerry Support sites I found this forum entry from July 2006 (!!!). In the post the user talks about that he went on with the BlackBerry support for 3 days to figure out the problem. The solution, as by the experts of the BlackBerry support, is to simply close the BlackBerry Manager when users are trying to synchronize!
Since this “bug” should have been fixed in SP7 for BES 4.0 (remember we are on 4.1.6 now) as by the quote from the support: “This is a known issue and a software defect report has been created. This SDR will be addressed in SP7 for BES 4.0. The time frame for which this SP will be released is not known yet.”, I thought that it did not apply to my current situation.
Well, you won’t belive it, but low and behold I closed the BlackBerry Manager and started the actication process again on my device. Within seconds the device was starting to sync (which then took about 30 minutes) but all is well again.
I hope someone else benefits from my time searching for a solution. RIM where can I send my bill to?
