For a good while now, my Blackberry had been stuck with elements of an “Enterprise” configuration on it. Why? Because I accidentally connected my Blackberry to a Windows PC that had Blackberry Desktop software configured in Enterprise mode. And next thing you know, there’s Enterprise stuff and an “IT policy” from a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) server on my BB that I didn’t want. Ugh…
I finally got around to looking up the correct method of eliminating the IT Policy, and effectively removing the Enterprise configuration from the BB. Mind you, if you research this a bit like I did, you’ll find lots of people recommending these things:
- Remove and restore “Service Books”; which pretty much just serves to annoy you
- Do a manual OS upgrade; where you download the binary, install it into your BB Desktop software, and then force it over to your BB device
- If you have a BES lying around, configure a blank IT Policy
- Back up the BB, wipe the thing, and do a full restore
I tried the first, second, and third method I list above (I didn’t want to deal with spinning up a BES server just for this). In the end, it was the full wipe with backup/restore that finally removed the policy, and it went *very* well. It’s scary in theory, but in practice it’s just a few clicks and a mild inconvenience, relative to the pain of having that stuck Enterprise nonsense. Why can’t Blackberry just have a “Disable” switch for invalid Enterprise settings? Hmph.
Anyway, I just wanted to document it here for me to easily reference later. This is based on the Blackberry Knowledge base doc KB14202, by the way. So here we go… If you don’t know what you’re doing here, don’t do it!
- Back up the device – Use the Windows-based BB Desktop software and a USB cable to perform a full backup of the device
- Reset to factory settings – While still connected via USB, launch a command prompt *as Administrator*, and run this command to completely zap the BB back to new:
cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Research In Motion\Apploader
loader.exe /resettofactory
…upon running this, the BB will reboot, wipe, and come up as new. Then,…
- Restore the backup – This is where you hope that the backup you just took minutes ago is good…
It worked well for me, and now I can do wireless updates again, and I can use features like the Blackberry “Protect” feature that requires that you don’t have an Enterprise IT Policy… bogus/stuck, or otherwise…
😉