Warning: If its a company provided Blabberry, Don't bother reading this post. You are better off handing it over to the IT dept.
Recently my Blackberry restarted while trying to download the new BBM 5.01. It showed this message on a white screen "App Error 552: Reload Device Software". I tried restarting it, soft resetting it (left alt+right shift+del for 5 secs) and hard resetting it (battery pullout), it was no use. I also tried to upgrade the software using the desktop manager, but the desktop manager could not connect to my device.
Went through a lot of forums and they all told me to reload the OS. I did that finally. Another long post on that.
But I realised while reloading the software that there was an intermediate step that I could have tried, which would have been faster and less painful. This first aid also saves you from deleting the data on the phone if there is no recent backup.
There is a software called Apploader which comes as a part of desktop manager but is installed separately. You can find it in C:/Program Files/Common/Research in Motion/App Loader*
*If you don't have it go to the blackberry website device software upgrade page in IE6 or higher. There will be a update button at the bottom. When you click on it the website will try install Apploader on your machine. Save or Run the file. (its 20MB). Now don't run the Apploader from the Update button once it is installed (it won't solve your problem).
Make sure your handset is not attached to the PC. Run the Loader.exe file in the folder.
Press Next on the first screen. the second screen will show the attached Blackberry phones by PIN. It will be blank.
Connect you blackberry to a PC via USB. You'll see your phone's Pin on the screen. Press Next. The software will pick up data from your device and then the next screen will show the applications installed.
Now the common reason for this error is a software which didn't load properly or the device is short on space. So use this screen to uninstall any application that you think caused the problem. Try to free up some space by removing the unused/unnecessary applications. (you can download them again later).
There is a chance that this may not solve the problem. Then you would certainly have reload the OS. Process is the same, except you'll have to download and run the OS package for your carrier from the blackberry website (downloads section). (Even if you have an factory unlocked blackberry, the process is the same. This wont lock your device to the carrier. On a safer side, you should download your current carrier's OS so that you'll not face any problems in using the phone in the short term) You'll have to provide some personal data. Its a 100/120mb exe file.
Precaution: before installing it on your PC, copy the Vendor.xml file (1kb) from the Apploader folder to a safe place. After installing the device software on the PC, go back to the Apploader folder and delete the new Vendor.xml file (>400kb) which is created by the OS package.
Now just run Loader again, it will show the new OS along with the applications. The next screen will ask you if you want to backup exist data on the device. Try backing up, but if it does not work then go ahead without backing up. You'll lose the data but the phone will work.
