Here is my process for OS installs. Try it next time!
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Hello crackberry fiends. I realize that 95% if you probably know everything I'm about to say but I also realize that this also means 5% of you don't. I have been a Storm owner since almost day one, and I've tried literally every OS that has ever leaked, as well as most of the hybrids. Over this past year I have seen countless bugs and glitches reported to exist within OS' and, with some notable exceptions, I never seem to experience ANY of them. So, what does this mean? Am I blessed with the one magic 9530 Storm that is just naturally immune to OS bugs? No way! There's got to be something else to it. Since there are always threads in here in which people ask questions about OS installs, as well as threads in which people say OS 0.0.x sucks because it's full of bugs that I've never encountered, I put together this list explaining precisely how I do every install. I know some of you may say that some of my steps might not be necessary (like doing a wipe before install) but I'm just telling you guys how I do it. I never seem to have any of the problems that people find in their installs, and maybe my method has something to do with it.
I'm splitting this into a hybrid part and a non-hybrid part. Just scroll to the part that is appropriate for what you're trying to install.
And yes, I am fully aware that there are lots of good "How to install a leaked OS" threads. I'm not trying to rewrite history. I'm simply noticing that I never seem to have any of the problems that people find in every OS and wondering if some of the steps I take in my installs are the reason for this. You may notice that I am quite meticulous about the way I do things, and perhaps this is what saves me from experiencing many of the problems that I read about on this forum every single day.
BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING READ THIS:
There are two major components to any OS and you should understand this concept before you go any further. There is a file known as an SFI file which is also called the "Radio." This file is the 'brains' of the OS. It contains the core features of the operating system itself. Things like flick scrolling and the camera are in this radio file. OS' come with a radio file that is for one particular model of the Storm (9500 or 9530) and will only work on the type for which they are intended. For example, OS 5.0.0.230 will only work on the 9530 Storm because it's radio file is not compatible with the 9500. The opposite is true. 5.0.0.216 has a 9500 radio and can only be loaded on that particular device, meaning you are wasting your time trying to load it on a 9530. It won't work, no matter what. You need to look around on this forum and determine which Storm the OS' radio is for and load the right one for you.
The other component of an OS is its Java files. These are the files that control how the apps built into the OS work, and they control some other subtle functions as well. Java files, unlike the radio files, will work on any Storm, regardless of the device model (9500 or 9530.)
So why do people bother making and using hybrids?
Well, if a brand new OS comes out but its radio is for a different kind of Storm than you have you can try using its Java files with a radio from a different OS to see if you can increase performance. Other times only Java files for a new OS will leak, but the radio does not leak. Some developers mix and match the Java files and other pieces of OS' with radio files that are known to function exceptionally well to maximize performance. These OS' that consist of pieces of different OS' that are carefully chosen to create an OS that works smoothly and may improve device performance are known as hybrids.
While some people are dead set against hybrids, the bottom line is you just need to try whatever you are interested in trying and see how it works for you. Everybody's opinion seems to be different.
Regardless of your decision, you're not going to destroy your phone. The absolute worst thing that could happen is that you could install an OS that you don't like or that doesn't work well for you. All you do is wipe it and put the official OS back on again, and that's a breeze.
So, without further ado:
IF YOU'RE INSTALLING A "FULL" NON-HYBRID OS:
First thing's first. Download the OS and then:
1: Install to your PC. You probably have at least one other OS already installed on your PC. Go to your control panel, look at installed programs, and uninstall all of the "Blackberry storm device software" entries except for the one you want to load right now. Having more than one installed can mess things up, they must go. Make sure you don't delete "Blackberry Desktop software." It looks similar and is right before the OS' on the list. That's the DM, you kinda need that!
2: Back up everything. Do a general backup in your Desktop Manager (DM) and then open Blackberry Swiss Army Knife (BBSAK) and do a backup of third party apps. BBSAK is a program for your PC that helps with loading OS' and making backups and stuff.
Here's a link to it: RIMGeeks.com • View topic - [Beta][8/18/09] BlackBerry Swiss Army Knife v1.5 You have to scroll down a bit to get to the download links. The text for those links say Mirror One, Mirror Two, etc.
3: In BBSAK, click "Wipe Device." This allows you to start on a clean slate and hopefully prevents corrupt databases / pieces of old OS' / the long lost body of Jimmy Hoffa messing up your new OS install. It takes just a few moments, and when it's done the phone reboots to a white screen that says "Error 507 reload software." This is what you want. It means the phone was wiped properly.
4: Disconnect your PC from the internet. Unplug the modem, right click on the network and disable it, whatever you have to do on your particular machine. One of the steps when loading an OS is that the software looks online to see what the latest version is and you'll have trouble updating the OS to something other than what it finds. Disconnecting from the internet solves this.
5: Shrink your OS. The tool to do it is here: http://www.theiexplorers.com/bb/Shrink-A-OS.rar
With this tool you can pick out the useless crap that you don't need and won't use and avoid wasting the memory on your device by installing it. I wouldn't mess with the default fonts/themes/backgrounds but the rest is fair game. I get rid of almost all of that stuff on every install I do. Make sure you click the button on the top of that application and direct it to the folder on your PC where you have the OS installed or the shrink won't work.
6: Go back to BBSAK. click the Load OS button. Sit back, let it work. Phone will reboot but it takes a long time.
You can reconnect to the internet while it's loading if you want.
7: Once it's done, do a battery pull three times in a row, allowing the phone to fully boot each time. The first time or two may take a really long time. Nothing is wrong, just wait it out.
8: When you've done three battery pulls, connect to DM. Go to the backup/restore tab. Click on Advanced, the button on the far right. In this window, click on 'file' and load the backup file you created with DM before wiping. The big white box that was empty before will now be full of stuff like alarm settings, recent contacts, etc. One by one pick out only the stuff that you absolutely NEED and click the arrow button to put them back on the phone. this means you DO want things like saved SMS, contacts, and emails but you do NOT want things like saved settings. Settings backed up from old OS' can mess up new ones and cause lots of glitches. You're a million times better off just going through the menus in the phone and setting up your options. I'm talking things like sound profiles, alerts settings, calendar reminders, camera settings, the whole works. Everything pretty much, with the exception of contacts and saved messages. Also it is important that you DO NOT SELECT EVERY SINGLE THING YOU WANT TO PUT BACK ON THE PHONE AND TRY TO DO IT ALL AT ONCE. People seem to get lots of errors this way. The phone doesn't like to have too much stuff thrown at it all at once for some reason. I'm not sure if this is an OS 5.0 issue or what, but you will have much better results if you pick one or two things and sync them over to the phone by themselves, then pick one or two more and so on.
9: The last (and most tedious) step. Time to reinstall your apps. The app backup you did in BBSAK created an .ALX file on your system. If you choose to load that ALX onto your phone you will replace all of your apps onto the phone at once however that is NOT what you want to do. I know it's way faster but trust me on this one. You're better off doing it differently. Instead of loading the ALX, look in the folder that BBSAK created for you named "Backup." Inside is a .COD file for each app you had on your phone when you made the backup. Using BBSAK's "Install COD" button, load each one back onto the device, one at a time. When it has successfully been reloaded on the phone you must do a battery pull and see if it works properly. See how it effects your free application memory, and get a feel for whether or not it works. Yes, I know it sucks doing it this way and takes a long time but it's the only way you're going to know if you have an app that is going to kill your phone's performance on the new OS. Do each one by itself with a battery pull after and experiment until you're confident that it isn't going to cause you any problems. While it is true that some apps won't start to act up for a few days, most of the time you can get a sense of what is going to happen right off the bat. Repeat this process until all of your apps are installed and then
10: Enjoy!
IF YOU'RE INSTALLING A HYBRID OS:
Hybrids have one extra step. To do this properly, you should probably understand how hybrids work. To put a hybrid on your phone, you first install a "full" OS onto your PC. Next, you download and install the hybrid itself. This overwrites parts of the "full" OS to change them into the pieces of other OS' that are being used in the hybrid. For example, the latest hybrid release uses parts of OS .287 and .238 but it is installed "over" OS .230. this means you install OS .230 to your computer, then the hybrid overwrites some of the .230 files with files from .238 and .287. The radio file will still be the same as the "full" OS that you are overwriting. You need to know what OS your chosen hybrid is meant to be installed over and install it first. Once you have the full OS over which you will be installing your hybrid:
1: Install the full OS to your PC. You probably have at least one other OS already installed on your PC. Go to your control panel, look at installed programs, and uninstall all of the "Blackberry storm device software" entries except for the one you want to load right now. Having more than one installed can mess things up, they must go. Make sure you don't delete "Blackberry Desktop software." It looks similar and is right before the OS' on the list. That's the DM, you kinda need that!
2: Install the hybrid. Most hybrids come with instructions these days, but generally speaking all you have to do is run the installer and tell it where the full OS is installed and it will do all the work.
3: Back up everything. Do a general backup in your Desktop Manager (DM) and then open Blackberry Swiss Army Knife (BBSAK) and do a backup of third party apps. BBSAK is a program for your PC that helps with loading OS' and making backups and stuff.
Here's a link to it: RIMGeeks.com • View topic - [Beta][8/18/09] BlackBerry Swiss Army Knife v1.5 You have to scroll down a bit to get to the download links. The text for those links say Mirror One, Mirror Two, et
4: In BBSAK, click "Wipe Device." This allows you to start on a clean slate and hopefully prevents corrupt databases / pieces of old OS' / the long lost body of Jimmy Hoffa messing up your new OS install. It takes just a few moments, and when it's done the phone reboots to a white screen that says "Error 507 reload software." This is what you want. It means the phone was wiped properly.
5: Disconnect your PC from the internet. Unplug the modem, right click on the network and disable it, whatever you have to do on your particular machine. One of the steps when loading an OS is that the software looks online to see what the latest version is and you'll have trouble updating the OS to something other than what it finds. Disconnecting from the internet solves this.
6: Shrink your OS. Yes, you can (and should) do this with hybrids as well as full OS'. The tool to do it is here: http://www.theiexplorers.com/bb/Shrink-A-OS.rar
With this tool you can pick out the useless crap that you don't need and won't use and avoid wasting the memory on your device by installing it. I wouldn't mess with the default fonts/themes/backgrounds but the rest is fair game. I get rid of almost all of that stuff on every install I do. Make sure you click the button on the top of that application and direct it to the folder on your PC where you have the OS installed or the shrink won't work.
7: Go back to BBSAK. click the Load OS button. Sit back, let it work. Phone will reboot but it takes a long time.
You can reconnect to the internet while it's loading if you want.
8: Once it's done, do a battery pull three times in a row, allowing the phone to fully boot each time. The first time or two may take a really long time. Nothing is wrong, just wait it out.
9: When you've done three battery pulls, connect to DM. Go to the backup/restore tab. Click on Advanced, the button on the far right. In this window, click on 'file' and load the backup file you created with DM before wiping. The big white box that was empty before will now be full of stuff like alarm settings, recent contacts, etc. One by one pick out only the stuff that you absolutely NEED and click the arrow button to put them back on the phone. this means you DO want things like saved SMS, contacts, and emails but you do NOT want things like saved settings. Settings backed up from old OS' can mess up new ones and cause lots of glitches. You're a million times better off just going through the menus in the phone and setting up your options. I'm talking things like sound profiles, alerts settings, calendar reminders, camera settings, the whole works. Everything pretty much, with the exception of contacts and saved messages. Also it is important that you DO NOT SELECT EVERY SINGLE THING YOU WANT TO PUT BACK ON THE PHONE AND TRY TO DO IT ALL AT ONCE. People seem to get lots of errors this way. The phone doesn't like to have too much stuff thrown at it all at once for some reason. I'm not sure if this is an OS 5.0 issue or what, but you will have much better results if you pick one or two things and sync them over to the phone by themselves, then pick one or two more and so on.
10: The last (and most tedious) step. Time to reinstall your apps. The app backup you did in BBSAK created an .ALX file on your system. If you choose to load that ALX onto your phone you will replace all of your apps onto the phone at once however that is NOT what you want to do. I know it's way faster but trust me on this one. You're better off doing it differently. Instead of loading the ALX, look in the folder that BBSAK created for you named "Backup." Inside is a .COD file for each app you had on your phone when you made the backup. Using BBSAK's "Install COD" button, load each one back onto the device, one at a time. When it has successfully been reloaded on the phone you must do a battery pull and see if it works properly. See how it effects your free application memory, and get a feel for whether or not it works. Yes, I know it sucks doing it this way and takes a long time but it's the only way you're going to know if you have an app that is going to kill your phone's performance on the new OS. Do each one by itself with a battery pull after and experiment until you're confident that it isn't going to cause you any problems. While it is true that some apps won't start to act up for a few days, most of the time you can get a sense of what is going to happen right off the bat. Repeat this process until all of your apps are installed and then
11: Enjoy!Last edited by AndyR83; 10-21-09 at 12:30 AM.
MassiveRican likes this.10-21-09 12:01 AMLike 1 -
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Got me beat... 10 or 11 steps is even better than my 12 step program...
LOL
Good Work!
If they need it spelled out ad nauseum, the 12 step prog is it.
Last edited by CrackBurglar; 10-21-09 at 09:37 AM.
10-21-09 09:35 AMLike 0 -
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Haha thanks. Like I said, I know there's a bunch of "How to load an OS" threads. That wasn't my intent. This is more of a "Hmm I never have any of the problems people always talk about so here's what I do every time and maybe you won't have problems either if you do it this way" thread.10-21-09 10:20 AMLike 0 -
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It's all good! and you did an extremely outstanding job! Verry succint. ie: marked by compact precise expression without wasted words.
Keep up the great work!10-21-09 10:33 AMLike 0 -
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I've followed these instructions step by step, and I've been sitting at this "Load JVM and system software" part for over an hour with no progress on the status bar at the bottom that just says "Loading system software". Its not frozen, but it just hasn't moved. Is this normal? If not, what do I do?10-21-09 03:13 PMLike 0 -
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I've loaded tons of different OS's on my phone from official to hybrids to leaks and there's some extra steps in here that could be really helpful. I don't usually have too many issues anyways (must have one of those "Magic Storms"
) but it's great to have such a detailed write-up of all the steps involved. Excellent work!10-21-09 03:22 PMLike 0 -
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From the OP:
I know some of you may say that some of my steps might not be necessary (like doing a wipe before install) but I'm just telling you guys how I do it. I never seem to have any of the problems that people find in their installs, and maybe my method has something to do with it.10-21-09 03:50 PMLike 0 -
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An hour is a pretty long time. Sometimes it can be a little slow but that's rather excessive. If it doesn't come back to life in the next few minutes I'd suggest wiping and starting over. If the same thing happens, I'd suggest uninstall/reinstall the OS to your computer, wipe, and try again. You don't have any other OS installed on your machine right?I've followed these instructions step by step, and I've been sitting at this "Load JVM and system software" part for over an hour with no progress on the status bar at the bottom that just says "Loading system software". Its not frozen, but it just hasn't moved. Is this normal? If not, what do I do?10-21-09 03:52 PMLike 0 -
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It went to well over an hour and a half, and then my computer turned itself off (using windows 7 beta on a macbook pro, the beta shuts itself off every 2 hours)An hour is a pretty long time. Sometimes it can be a little slow but that's rather excessive. If it doesn't come back to life in the next few minutes I'd suggest wiping and starting over. If the same thing happens, I'd suggest uninstall/reinstall the OS to your computer, wipe, and try again. You don't have any other OS installed on your machine right?
It got like 25% of the way through the installation and just sat there. Now that my computers restarted, the Swiss Army Knife won't recognize that my phones plugged in at all, and the red LED blinks like I've got a new message even though there isn't an OS on the phone right now.
Blackberry desktop managed to recognize the phone and when I went to update it on there it skipped right to step 3 of 4 and has been sitting at the "Connecting to the device (ARM)" step for a little over 10 minutes now. This is the first time I've tried to install a new OS so this is the only one I've got on my computer.
10-21-09 04:01 PMLike 0 -
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OK, here's what I do. Sometimes the phone can be a little bit of a pain to connect to the computer. I often find myself disconnecting and reconnecting a few times before the computer recognizes the device. There is a fix for this available from RIM, but I don't think you can really benefit from it right this second since you haven't got the OS on the phone yet. Once you finish your install, look into this if it's a problem you experience a lot:
http://www.blackberry.com/hotfix/2009fall/calfix.exe
Anyways, back to your issue. I would do a battery pull and restart your computer. Re-wipe your phone. Reinstall the OS to your computer. Essentially, start over from scratch. If your phone is just giving you the black screen with the red LED on, do batt pulls until you get the white "reload software" screen and proceed.
Disconnect/reconnect it a few times to get the computer to recognize it and proceed from scratch. Make sure you're disconnecting from the internet when you go to start installing. Hopefully a fresh start will help you get it done.10-21-09 04:15 PMLike 0 -
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The red LED is doing like a double-blink every 3-4 seconds and no matter how many times I pull the battery (at least 10) nothing ever changes. I can't get my computer to recognize it at all (I thought desktop manager did but I was wrong) and at this point I don't know how I could even revert it back to normal to get it to work. I've tried unplugging it from the computer and plugging back in and that doesn't work either and without it being recognized I'm not sure how to fix it. Help? haha
Anyways, back to your issue. I would do a battery pull and restart your computer. Re-wipe your phone. Reinstall the OS to your computer. Essentially, start over from scratch. If your phone is just giving you the black screen with the red LED on, do batt pulls until you get the white "reload software" screen and proceed.
Disconnect/reconnect it a few times to get the computer to recognize it and proceed from scratch. Make sure you're disconnecting from the internet when you go to start installing. Hopefully a fresh start will help you get it done.10-21-09 06:11 PMLike 0 -
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I can't get Shrink-a-OS to work on my computer. I get it downloaded and extracted, but when I try to open, it tells me that it's encountered a problem and needs to close. Any suggestions? Thanks!11-01-09 07:02 PMLike 0 -
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Crucial_XtremeRetired ModeratorThere is no real need to wipe the device when upgrading the device software. Both the DM & Apploader Wizard both produce a '507' error(Wiping) during the process. The only reason anyone should ever wipe the device prior to loading newer firmware is if they're having serious issues. And I mean serious as in the device barely functions. That is rarely the case, thus the device rarely needs to be wiped. But overall good directions.11-01-09 07:10 PMLike 0 -
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Every time I open my DM I am told that there is a 5.0 Core update I need to install, though I've done it 3 times already. So I decided to wipe and reinstall using your directions. I've only ever used DM to install updates.
I tried to go into my control panel to get rid of all of my OSs except for 5.0.0.328 but all I have under Programs is Blackberry Desktop Software, Blackberry Device Software Updater, and Blackberry Media Sync. My DM shows that I have .65, .75, and .148 as well as 5.0. I've gone through my Blackberry folders and my download folders and I can't find them (Vista). How can I get rid of them?11-01-09 08:19 PMLike 0 -
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hey mine did the same thing turned out my cable was actually shorted out so i got half way through and kept getting a blinking red light and an error message stataing application cant be loaded i had to revert back to 4.5 then wipe the device using the army thing then go back with the install and it worked smooth like a babys ***I've followed these instructions step by step, and I've been sitting at this "Load JVM and system software" part for over an hour with no progress on the status bar at the bottom that just says "Loading system software". Its not frozen, but it just hasn't moved. Is this normal? If not, what do I do?
12-22-09 02:51 AMLike 0
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Here is my process for OS installs. Try it next time!
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