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I've seen that problem even on 4.1 versions. Usually a battery pull will fix it, for a while. You can downgrade but you may still have the same problem. In order to downgrade you'll need to uninstall the 4.2 OS from the PC. Go to Control Panel >Add/Remove Programs and find the 4.2 OS installation and uninstall it. If you didn't have the 4.1 OS installed to your PC you'll need to now install that. Use
this thread to search the CDMA carriers for a 4.1 OS for the 8703e. You may find one at the Verizon site, I'm not sure. It doesn't matter if it's from another CDMA carrier, though, it'll work fine. Once downloaded and installed to the PC, delete the vendor.xml file and plug the device in and run DM and Application Loader. It will tell you that a downgrade will take place.