Internet Explorer 7 and Active X saved my BlackBerry

After reading John Gags post on a new BlackBerry app and talking with one of the guys at work I decided I would upgrade the OS on my BlackBerry. Well turns out I bricked my phone in the process. It hung just after it wiped the old OS and was in the process of re-loading the new jvm. Now I don't know if this was just bad luck or if Windows 7 was to blame but it just hung half way into the upgrade.

The phone would turn on and the red light would blink 3 times then 2 times over and over and that was it. After reading a number of threads 1, 2 , 3... etc

Nothing was working for me but I knew I had some hope as plugging in the BlackBerry and runnign the " LOADER /NOJVM " command would see my BlackBerry and stop the light blinking for a while.

I swapped between 2 computers ( Windows 7 64 bit, Windows Vista ) and as one of the reboots ( of which there were many ) I opened Internet Explorer rather then Fire Fox. I went to the BlackBerry site and found the update page to start re-downloading the Desktop Manager where there was an option to "Upgrade Now" using Active X. Hey I tried everything else so why not try this. I installed the active X control and up popped a window that looked just like the Desktop Manger software and the Operating system began to load. After 15 mins my phone rebooted and started up! All my data was wipped and I had to re-install my apps ( yes TwitterBerry was the first ) but it was working!

So there you have it Internet Explorer 7 and Active X saved the day!