[Stretsh]

Scenario: I needed to reload the device OS of my friend's Curve 8520. I made a full backup using DM7 and downloaded the device software by the provider from the Blackberry website. I then went ahead and did a wipe and factory reset, using BBSAK. After that I tried to restore the backup, using DM7, but selecting the relevant backup grayed out the Restore button, with a red message saying that the backup file is corrupt.

Did some digging and found out that I could change the extension of the bbb file to.zip and open it with Winzip. Comparing it with other bbb files, I noticed that Manifest.xml was missing from the archive.

I found some programs that can access info in the bbb file, like Elcomsoft Blackberry Backup Explorer, but the only one that could access the bbb file without manifest was Reincubate's Blackberry Backup Extractor. Unfortunately I have no way to pay for a license (or anything online for that matter), so I'm stuck looking for alternative ways to get, especially the contacts back.

I am looking for a way to recreate the Manifest.xml. I think I should find out how many records are in each database, because I already have the number of databases and their sequential number. Is there a way to do this?

Is there something else I should be looking for when creating the xml file?

Note: If this is the wrong forum for this tread, please forgive me. If there's something I failed to mention, please let me know.