the back room tech » Blackberry

How to remotely wipe a media card in a BlackBerry smartphone

Julie — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:19:12 +0000

I was very excited to see the KB17776 article released by Research In Motion today entitled How to remotely wipe an installed microSD media card in a BlackBerry smartphone. Just yesterday we had a Storm stolen, and I was wondering how to wipe the media card.

Unfortunately, this has to be the most useless KB article ever. I would assume any document with the words “How To” in the title would actually detail how to do something… Here’s the remainder of the document in it’s entirety:

An installed microSD media card cannot be wiped remotely.

This is a previously reported issue that has been escalated internally to our development team. No resolution time frame is currently available.

Fix: Blackberry Media Manager exits with R6025 pure virtual function call error

Julie — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:38:04 +0000

My Blackberry Media Manager kept exiting on me when trying to access the Media stored on my Blackberry Storm. The specific error was:

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library X Runtime Error!

Program: C:\program Files\Roxio\Media Manager 9\Mediamanager9.exe

R6025 – pure virtual function call

The problem ended up being that the RoxMediaDB9 service was disabled.

I changed the service from disabled to manual (could have been set to automatic if I wanted it to start following each reboot), started the RoxMediaDB9 service, which allowed Media Manager to start without issue.

SQL Query to determine Blackberry MDS Services administration password

Julie — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:20:18 +0000

I was troubleshooting a Blackberry Manager problem today that required the BES MDS credentials. The admin thought he knew what the credentials were, but wasn’t sure. So I wrote the following SQL query and ran it against the Blackberry Enterprise Server’s BesMgmt database to get the user name and password:

Use BesMgmt

select

WSAdminUserName, WSAdminPassword

from dbo.MDSAGConfig

Replace BesMgmt with the name of your BES database if you are not using the default database name.

See RIM KB15618 for additional details on how to reset the BES MDS Services administration password.

Fix: HTTP Error 413: Request Entity Too Large on Blackberry

Julie — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:10:08 +0000

I was attempting to load a rather large web page on my Blackberry today, and received the following error:

HTTP Error 413: Request Entity Too Large on Blackberry

Here’s how I fixed it.

Open Blackberry Manager, selected the affected Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES).
Highlight servername_MDS-CS_1
Select the Connections Tab and click Edit Properties > General > Flow Control
Increase the KB/Connection setting (maximum is 1024, or 1MB)
Restart the Blackberry MDS Connection Service

I was then able to view the large web page on my Blackberry.

BES Error: CheckNewMbSyncRecords() MISSED MAIL ITEM ARRIVED FOR INACTIVE OR NON-EXISTANT USER

Julie — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:16:18 +0000

Found the following messages in my Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.1.6 MAGT log file this morning. I hadn’t noticed them previously, so I did some digging to find out their origin.

CheckNewMbSyncRecords() MISSED MAIL ITEM ARRIVED FOR INACTIVE OR NON-EXISTANT USER, Id=73

CALENDAR UPDATE REQUESTED FOR INACTIVE OR NON-EXISTANT USER, Id=73

Wrote a quick SQL query that I ran against the Besmgmt database to find out who was user ID 73.

SELECT     Id, DisplayName, UserName
FROM         UserConfig
WHERE     (Id = ‘73′)

The results returned were:

73 Amy Jones ajones

I verified that Amy Jones was still listed as a user in Blackberry Manager. She was, so I looked at her Groupwise account. Apparently our User Access group had disabled her Groupwise account while she was on leave from the company. Disabling the account is what caused the above entries in the log files.

Howto: Export a list of all BES users via the Blackberry Manager tool

Julie — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:37:48 +0000

A supervisor requested a list of all Blackberry Enterprise Server users in our organization. I knew if I had the BES resource kit installed I could provide management with a number of reports, but I didn’t have time to go through that process. Here’s how I quickly exported the list of users through Blackberry Manager 4.1.6:

Open Blackberry Manager
Highlight Blackberry Domain
Select the All Users tab
Highlight the entire list of users by selecting the first user, then selecting the last user while holding down the shift key.
With all the users highlighted, right click a user to bring up the context menu
Select Export Asset Summary Data

Save the file to a convienent location. The file will be saved in .txt format, but you can change the file extension to .csv, then open the document in Excel to remove columns or sort data.

If you have multiple BES servers in your environment and only want to list users on a particular server, perform the same steps as above, but instead of selecting Blackberry domain, highlight the server in question and select the Users tab instead of All Users.

Fix: Cannot find Groupwise users to add to the Blackberry Enterprise Server

Julie — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:20:14 +0000

A user was recently having issues with his Groupwise email on his Blackberry, so our BES admin planned on removing him from BES, then re-adding him. Removing the user was no problem, but the admin was quite suprised to find out he could not re-add the user. When searching for the user to add, the user was not found.

I found RIM KB12111, which describes running GWSystemAddressBookSync.exe manually to resynchronize the Blackberry Configuration Database with the Groupwise System Address Book. By default this process runs every 12 hours.

The user in question was not a new user, but running the manual synchronization allowed the BES admin to find the user and re-add him onto BES.

By default you can find the GWSystemAddressBookSync.exe program in the C:\Program Files\Research in Motion\Blackberry Enterprise Server directory on the BES server. Run the .exe from the command prompt and wait for the process to finish.

My BES is version 4.1.14 with 180 users, and my Groupwise System is version 7.0.3 hot patch 1 with 2600 users, and the sync process took about 14 minutes to complete when run during production hours.

After upgrading to BES 4.1.3 or higher for Groupwise, excessive GWXMLData::ContactSyncRecordToXML warnings appear in the Windows Application log

Julie — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:45:44 +0000

Blackberry KB15941 exlains that starting with BES 4.1, additional warnings are logged to the Blackberry Messaging and Windows Application log. These warnings are informational in nature, and do not indicate a problem.

If you’d like to reduce or eliminate these messages, KB04342 says to edit the EventLogLevel DWORD value of the appropriate BES service located at :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Research In Motion\Blackberry Enterprise Server\Logging Info

DWORD values and Event Types correspond as follows:

0 = Disable all event logging

1 = Errors

2 = Warnings

3 = Information

4 = Debug

5 = Other

Unforturnately, I was unable to determine which service was generating these excessive GWXMLData warnings, so I had to contact RIM directly. Their response was that the Mailbox Agent service needs to have it’s EventLogLevel changed to 1, which would log errors only.

I made this change on my BES server, and the event logs are now much slimmer!

Viewing Pending Messages by user in Blackberry Manager

Julie — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:28:32 +0000

After our recent upgrade of our Blackberry Enterprise Server from version 4.0.7 to 4.1.14, I noticed the total pending message counts shown in the BES MAGT log file never droppped below 275. I was concerned about this, thinking that the server was busy and could never get all messages processed, even during times of light usage, like in the middle of the night.

I later found that the Pending Data Packets field can be added within Blackberry Manager. This allowed me to sort by users with the most pending messages. Identifying these users, and corresponding the Last Contact Time allowed me to determine which users are probably no longer with the company. A quick call to HR verified my hypothesis, and after removing these users my pending message counts dropped to a more reasonable amount.

To view the BES pending message counts:

1. Launch Blackberry Manager

2. Highlight the BES server name, and select Users

3. From the View menu, select Choose Columns

4. Under Available Columns, select Pending Data Packets and click Insert > OK

5. Click the Pending Data Packets column to sort by users with the most pending requests.

Troubleshooting the “Unable to Complete Request” Error When Synching a Blackberry with Groupwise via Blackberry Desktop Manager

Julie — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:07:32 +0000

A client has periodically received the “Unable to Complete Request” message when synching her Blackberry 7100i with Groupwise via Blackberry Desktop Manager.

We previously fixed this error by following the instructions found in Blackberry KB11703, but that only fixes the problem for a few months, and requires Intellisync to be reconfigured. This includes re-entering the Groupwise password, which can be a problem if the user is not around when you are troubleshooting the problem!

Her configuration included the following:

Windows XP SP2
Groupwise Client 7.0.2
Blackberry Desktop Manager 4.2.2.1.4

No relevant errors were shown in the Windows System or Application log files.

Her Blackberry Desktop Manager RIM.log file showed the following error messages:

“Failed to open device database!”
“Internal Error #-728. Translation Canceled!”
“Internal Error #4238. Translation Canceled!“

I enabled advanced logging for Intellisync by following the instructions in Blackberry KB01451 and found the following errors in the ptTrace.log file:

Wed Apr 23 12:27:24 2008: Error 1st=1053 (f=0xb006) 2nd=722 (f=0×8a0a2).-728 at D:\TEMPDIR_5154\se_5x_engine\iltif2\TIFSYNC.CPP line 5156
Wed Apr 23 12:27:24 2008: Error 0×41d.1053.-728 at D:\TEMPDIR_5154\se_5x_engine\iltif2\TIFSYNC.CPP line 4926
Wed Apr 23 12:27:24 2008: Error 0.-728 at D:\TEMPDIR_5154\se_5x_engine\ilxtrans\CILTRANS.CPP line 1383
Wed Apr 23 12:27:24 2008: Error -728.-728 at D:\TEMPDIR_5154\se_5x_engine\ilsdk\Ilx_sdk.cpp line 337
12:27:24.921: Translation Unit Status: User=4014a094, rc=-728, Phase=30, TrErr=-728, SysErr=0 at D:\TEMPDIR_5154\se_5x_engine\ilx32\XLATEV3.cpp line 490
Wed Apr 23 12:27:24 2008: Error -728.-728 at D:\TEMPDIR_5154\se_5x_engine\ilsync\XLATE.CPP line 3243
Wed Apr 23 12:27:24 2008: Error -728.-728 at D:\TEMPDIR_5154\se_5x_engine\ilsync\XLATE.CPP line 2893
Wed Apr 23 12:27:24 2008: Error -728.-728 at D:\TEMPDIR_5154\se_5x_engine\ilsync\XLATE.CPP line 2465
Wed Apr 23 12:27:24 2008: Error -728.-728 at D:\TEMPDIR_5154\se_5x_engine\ilsync\XLATE.CPP line 3689

To fix the Groupwise calendar synchronization problem I did the following, without re-configuring Intellisync:

1) Open Blackberry Desktop Manager – Synchronize icon – Configuration tab – Configure Sync button – Configure drop down box – Advanced Settings

2) Select the Field Mapping Button

3) Double Click on Alarm Flag, Free Busy, and Private to make the mapping relationship double arrows disappear.

4) Click OK 3 times

5) Select Synchronize tab – Synchronize Now. Synchronization should now succeed.

6) Navigate to Configure Sync button – Configure drop down box – Advanced Settings – Field Mappings button.

7) Drag the fields in the right column up or down to align them with matching Handheld fields in the left column. Click or press the spacebar to map or unmap the fields. Re-associate the following fields:

Alarm Flag – Alarm Flag
Free Busy – Status
Private – Private Flag

8 ) Click OK 3 times

9) Select Synchronize tab – Synchronize Now. Synchronization should now succeed.

Please note:

I chose the Alarm Flag, Free Busy and Private field mappings because they seemed somewhat non-standard. I may have only needed to re-associate one of these fields. If/When the synchronization fails again, I’ll try just changing one field at a time to try to nail down which one actually caused the problem.

You may also find that a different field mapping is the cause of your problem. To ensure the calendar synchronization is actually the cause of your issues, try performing a sync with no categories selected for synchronization. If this succeeds, try enabling synchronization for one category at a time until you can get the sync to fail.