[Omnitech]

I've put off updating the OS on my Verizon Bold 9650 for the last couple of updates because of how much I fear all the disruption this inevitably causes, and lo-and-behold, it fails again.

I guess if people only have 3 apps or something it might not be a big deal but the risk of failure seems to rise exponentially the more software you have installed.

1) Installed latest DM 7.10_b35 on Win7-x64 box. (Why does Control Panel list the version as 7.1.33 though??) Manual backup of data and 3rd-party-apps (via device switch tool) seemed to work fine.

2) Followed prompts to update to latest carrier bundle, it auto-installed the BB device software updater v7.1.34, required reboot.

3) After doing restore, warns me that application data couldn't be restored, I could manually restore it. (Obviously among other things my background photo etc wasn't restored yet, I assume either all the app permission prompts I got on boot that I couldn't answer prevented data restore to those apps and stopped the process or perhaps because of corrupted SMS data, see below.)

4) After loader process finished, tried manual data restore. Everything went fine until it got to restoring SMS messages, where it deadlocked on "Restoring SMS Messages 135 of 564 records".

5) After waiting ~20 minutes with no progress, tried clicking cancel button. Button went grey, no other response. It's been like that for 20 minutes more.

UGH.

I sure hope they fix this nonsense in BB10. It is so ridiculous to have to re-install every single application and all data every single time you do a minor OS update.

Anyone have any hints on what to do now? It's a catch-22 - unplug it and corrupt something, or wait for something that will never occur...

[Omnitech]

OK, happy ending. :-)

After waiting over an hour with no progress, I disconnected the device. Desktop Manager didn't want to re-connect, so I restarted the device and restarted DM.

Then I did a selective restore, everything except SMS Messages. That worked OK. Checked various apps etc.

The SMS messages were not all there (recent ones seemed like the list entries were there but no content), no surprise since that was aborted in the middle of the restore. So I deleted all the SMS messages, figuring if push came to shove I could restore them from an earlier sync on a different PC.

Then I did a second selective restore from the same pre-update backup, this time just SMS Messages and nothing else. Went fine, everything intact.

Who knows why it decided to freeze in the middle of the first attempt.

I still hope RIM does away with this horrible upgrade process though - having to re-register all your apps, etc...

[BergerKing]

Glad to hear you got the issue resolved. In the electronic world, crap happens, and panic can sneak up on you quickly. Alls well again, no real harm done.

[Omnitech]

Well I'm still trying to get QuickLaunch to work - they apparently require a new activation code every time you do an OS update, and their system for retrieving codes for people who bought the app from the defunct Mobihand store doesn't seem to recognize me. Waiting to hear back...

In the meantime, had to re-register all my Bellshare apps and import all their saved configurations, re-register and/or answer EULA questions for BB Traffic, BB Travel, Vlingo, LogicMail, Yelp, UrbanSpoon, BTSidekick, Navita Translator, WellsFargo Mobile, BB AppWorld, etc.

Last but not least, lost all my settings for BJive IM, BBSSH and Poynt.

This is precisely why I haven't updated the OS on this thing for 1-1.5 years. In addition to all of the above, the device was off-network for 4-5 hours while I slogged through all of this.

I know about software and firmware updates, I'm a lifelong techie and I've been doing I.T. consulting for over 20 years now. Classic BBOS is major chore, if not a disaster in that regard.

[BergerKing]

I got a message from the developer of QuickLaunch, he let folks know that since MobiHand wasn't forking over his dough, he pulled the App from their store, and a new update would be paid for and then updates would come thru his site or App World. One of my favorite apps on BB, lost it when I did a factory reset on the Style, before I retired it from service as a phone.

And all the licensing from multi-parties and setting things back up is annoying, agreed.

[Omnitech]

Well Mobihand is gone completely now. His experience with them was probably just the harbinger of the end, I guess.

You can really see the distinction in the design of apps that need to save local configuration data. Some of them apparently use the RIM APIs for saving/restoring configuration data (ie FileScout, LogicMail, ReportAway, Opera Mini), some use proprietary save/restore mechanisms (ie Bellshare, nikkisoft) and some of them just get trashed whenever you do an OS update. (ie BJive IM, which ALWAYS loses all my chat history and settings whenever I do an OS update)

I hope RIM is mandating a standard way for apps to save local configuration data and registration details in BB10 to eliminate this nastiness.

The final nail in the coffin as far as updates is the pitifully slow reboot time of traditional BB devices, combined with the need to reboot for minor app updates, what appears to be glacial write speeds to internal flash memory, and lastly, feet-in-quicksand speed of the Java VM which I assume is why a 1MB update to a BB application that might take 10 or 20 minutes to accomplish on my 9650, whereas an equivalent thing on my Android tablet takes 20 seconds. (I used to think the 3G network speed was the bottleneck - but BBOS 6 updates seem to work just about as slowly over WiFi)