Now that Bell has released it, I'm going to upgrade to 7.1.0.267 from 7.0.0.585. In the past, I've always used DM and never wiped the phone when upgrading the OS. I'm wondering if I should use BBSAK to wipe the phone before installing the new OS.

What are the advantages / disadvantages of wiping the phone when upgrading? I realize I would have to reinstall all of the applications and reconfigure email accounts. Would I have to reactivate the BES?

I can't answer the BES part of the question.

On the other, I know some people wipe the device and install the new OS. I never do.
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You should talk to your BES Admin before you try to install a new OS and get his or her OK, especially if it is their device and they are paying the bills. Some firms are very strict about what you can and cannot do to the device, up to the point of termination if you do something against their policies.

Thanks for the replies. There are no issues about upgrading the OS WRT the BES administrator. I'm only interested in the process. I have previously used DM, and never wiped a phone, but I have noticed that there was junk left behind from some applications and thought it might be cleaner to start from a wiped phone. I'm just not sure if it's possible to do it without having to reactivate the BES or whether DM will do that.

I use BES and my company strongly suggests just doing an upgrade without any wipe or app deleting. The delay you will get after doing a wipe and reload may cause you problems with email and other push applications.
Enterprise activation is not usually any problem unless your IT group requires a new activation password, mine does. thats how they control what we do.
As Dubdub suggested, a call to your admin is best.

Ok - BES...
If you install /reinstall any OS and connect to the DM once done, with the exchange client on that same machine (providing Outlook was already profiled with the BES, which it should be), then no - you don't need to reactivate. It will - regardless of a pre-wipe or not, reconnect to your BES. If you use loader or the DM, you will need to simply open the DM once done, and plug in your BB. Wireless OTA activation will start shortly after that - without the need to enter a BES OTA password. I do it all the time.

Do you have a machine with Outlook connected to the exchange server that you use, that also has the BB DM on it?

If you have an issue with this - send me a PM and I will explain further.

Thanks for the reply. My laptop has DM which is connected to the BES and (cough, cough) Lotus Notes which is connected to the server when I'm either on the company network or else using the VPN if I'm not in the office. On previous occasions when I have upgraded the OS, I have downloaded it and installed it with DM, not OTA. It sounds like it will be the same whether I wipe or not. A few people already did the upgrade OTA over the weekend and it took hours. In one case, the user had to request a reactivation code. The others worked okay, just took forever.

If BESAdmin allows it

download the OS and install it, use loader exe to install it and BES access should work fine after if connected to the network via VPN.

I have done it this way for years.

Agree with KR - you're good to go, except with the Lotus Notes part - LOL. Not our preference here in this enterprise, however, wipe or not, you're good to reactivate on the BES without going OTA and you won't need an activation password! As KR indicates, we have also done it this way for years, long before OTA was available.

Be glad you aren't using Lotus Notes. It's a horrible application!

I installed the latest version of BBSAK and it's not working very well. It has trouble connecting to the device after DM has run. I have to kill bbdevmgr.exe before BBSAK will connect to the phone. Also, it cannot find the phone os to load. I checked on the BBSAK forum and it appears others are having the same problems, but there does not seem to be a fix.

That is correct - I use Javaloader (a RIM app) - but in OS7, a change was made that will NOT allow you to use it - if you have the DM or loader running at the same time. It's basically not allowing the two apps to access the device at the same time.

Here's the simple way to do, the way I have always done it.

If you want to simply wipe the device - do this:

1) Download and install JL Commander (javaloader is easier to use, but harder to find) from here: JL_Cmder

2) Do a full device wipe, but make sure you are NOT running either the DM or loader.exe at the time you do this.

3) Once the device reboots, you should see a 507 error

4) Open loader.exe (located in the Apploader folder) something like this "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Research In Motion\AppLoader". If you run Windows 64 bit, it would be more like this location "C:\Program Files (x86) \Common Files\Research In Motion\AppLoader.

5) You should see the device PIN.

6) Run the install, adding or subtracting the desired applications and you're good to go!

Before you do anything - backup! backup! backup! (your data). Although you're running from a BES and it's not critical, I would still recommend you backup the device 1st!

I exchanged some email with the guys who wrote BBSAK and they have fixed the problem of it not recognizing OS 7 or OS 7.1. I tested a beta and it seems to be okay. They will be doing some more testing and should be releasing the new version soon.

(I tested the beta version on the understanding that I would not share it with anyone so please don't ask me for it.)

Perfect! Good luck - should be easy to deal with now!

I used the beta BBSAK to wipe the device and load the new OS. The process was a bit flakey because BBSAK has problems with bbdevmgr.exe, which starts automatically whenever the phone reboots and for some reason, BBSAK is not able to kill it. This caused a moment of fear when the loader was not able to connect to the device. Once I realized that I had to manually kill bbdevmgr.exe, the loader connected right away and did its thing. After the OS loaded, I started up DM and the enterprise activation started on its own. As expected, I had to reinstall the applications, which I did using bb app world on the phone. The bb app world website is confused about what apps are installed (as usual). I had to restore email messsages.

Everything is golden. Thanks for the help!

You can address the issue easily in the future by doing this -

DM>>Tools>>start BlackBerry Desktop Software when a device is connected>>unchecked.

Or, just use the RIM Javaloader.exe software - which you can download from their dev site (part of the JDE package) - or send me a PM with your e-mail and I'll send you the file.

That software has NEVER not worked for me no matter what and with the batch file it comes with...you have nothing to do except plug the phone and and hit "wipe".

BBSAK uses RIM tools to do everything it does - might as well just use the RIM tool without the BBSAK UI...

Thanks for the tip about not automatically starting DM when the phone is connected. Regarding javaloader, please send it to me. I sent you a PM with my email address. Thanks again for the help.

I believe, as I just checked, that Javaloader.exe works even with bbdevmamager running. Screw BBSAK - LOL