[Anoxxia9]

I'm having what seems to be a growing issue with Verizon devices activating on our BES. We are primarily an AT&T environment, but there are a handful of users permitted to use Verizon devices on our network when primary usage locations get poor signal. About two weeks ago, I started getting emails from one of our remote offices about a device that wouldn't seem to complete activation, initiated contact, started getting emails, but never came back with server time out errors, or any other error for that matter. We can get everything except the contact list to load (after many many activation attmepts). Since that point in time, we've attempted two more 8830s and had the same issue. We've removed and recreated BES accounts, wiped the devices, disabled wireless sync for contacts and attempted to activate with Desktop manager, tried to use it to force down the contact list only, regenerated encryption, forced down service books, etc, but cannot seem to get a complete activation any which way we go. We activate AT&T devices all day long, and only see this with the Verizon 8830. Verizon doesn't seem to want to touch the issue with a 10 foot pole, and tell us to call RIM... but RIM seems to lean toward it being a Verizon related issue (which was my gut feeling to begin with). Has anyone else seen a similar issue, or do you have any suggestions?

[gibson_hg]

So the Enterprise Activation screen still displays a percentage and never completes? Does the Address Book show up in the list of items to be synced? Can the user activate successfully on a different device, not from Verizon? How about reloading the OS on the device, seeing that you have already performed a security wipe. If the address book doesn't show in the list for a different device then it may be the mailbox for the user. It's something to try.

[Anoxxia9]

That is correct - usually stops up around 11%
We've disabled contacts and memo pad from the BES, and from the device - but then if we download the contact list via Desktop Manager and turn wireless sync back on, it will go back into an Activation mode and completely stop all synch for email and everything else while it tries to complete. I'll have them give this a shot, but since it is occuring on 3 different devices directly out of the box, I'm not holding very high hopes on it. We can still activate the same user on a non-Verizon device without issues, but he's I guess die-hard Verizon because they have a phone called "world edition" regardless of the fact that my AT&T devices don't need to be labeled "world edition" to work internationally, lol.

[gibson_hg]

If the activation keeps stopping at 11% for all 3 users odds are it's a mailbox issue. Look at this KB and try see if the example log line matches in your BES logs:

BlackBerry Search Results

Essentially what happens is the ID of a folder changes, like they deleted their contacts folder and created a new one. The BES only syncs with the default folder and not newly created ones. The article will show you how to check for the issue. If this is the issue I'm surprised that RIM support didn't find it, it's the first thing I looked for when activation stopped at 11%.

If that's not the issue just search the BlackBerry Technical Solution Center for Activation 11%. You should find some articles that may help.

Keep us posted.

[Anoxxia9]

So, in all weirdness, this last activation I was working on finally just eventually completed on its own.
I just now got a hold of the BES logs for that day though from our server team, and the errors that were showing up for this particular user were
"[30000] (12/27 10:05:44.046):{0x17E0} [Alarm::ActivateAlarm] Queuing alarm: <N/A> | BlackBerry Messaging Agent wireless2 Agent 3 (Application Event Log on ....} GetContactPicture - No picture synced, filename is not ContactPicture.jpg"
and
[30000] (12/27 10:10:06.625):{0x17E0} [Alarm::ActivateAlarm] Queuing alarm: <N/A> | BlackBerry Dispatcher wireless2 (Application Event Log on ....} DecryptDecompress() failed, Tag=17896, Error=604
over and over again.
One of the other users was getting errors on Memo Pad - so I disabled that and it should finish now.
I guess it's just all different issues for each user.
But thank you for the advice!

[mrobinson674]

I've seen activations stall at 11% on many occasions. What I have always found to be the problem is that the end user's folders are not mapped correctly in Exchange. The best place to look at that is from the user's Outlook client right click and select properties on the contacts folder. Select the actvities tab and see if any of the default folders have a blank mapping on the right hand side.

In most cases this issue can be resolved by launching outlook from a run command using the following switch: outlook.exe /resetfolders

If that doesn't work you can manually map them from the activities tab I mentioned above.

Not really sure what causes the broken mappings, but I've gotten to the point that I check that before running someone through an enterprise activation.