Alltel Rom Update and Phone is no more

[SlickGnome]

So I finally got around to doing the official Rom update on my phone. Seems to go through just fine (can get into all apps, and not crashing and all that fun stuff), but can't make any calls. Read that it can screw up your activation and you need to *228 opt 3 and re-activate. Unfortunatly for me, nearest Alltel tower is 35 minutes north of me. So day after I update, I drive up, activate the phone, make a few calls and its great. Drive back to work (was on my lunch break) and didn't mess with it rest of afternoon. That night at PT job, I try to make a call, and "Your activation code could not be verified. Please contact customer service, message #16..." blah blah blah. I'm like awwww crap. So I have messed with it, and messed with it, and messed with it, re flashed, changed every setting I could. Finally gave in and called Alltel tech support (hate doing that) and lo and behold, they have had a few phones do this, apparently the radio update doesn't work correctly and it fubars it, after that it will ONLY work on an Alltel network, and not always correctly even then. Wonderful. This on a 3 month old (new not refurb) after having 4 bad refurbs in a row (ran the store out of refurbs) and 600+ miles worth of gas driving to the nearest store (150 miles round trip) Im back to a PDA with random text message ability. It was bad enough that my phone was apparently giving the tower I was connecting to fits, the Tech rep said my phone was jumping on and off the tower non stop (which is why I can recieve about 1 of every 20 calls made to me but only stay on for a few seconds, and random text messages) . I've tried the GPS on the phone (keep reading conflicting reports of it being enabled or not) and it either messed up with the bad flash, or it wasn't enabled on the rom. I'm thinking on the replacement when I get it, I'm just going to go ahead and update it and if it bricks a second one, I'll throw a community rom on instead.

[jake1s]

Was it a message that said your activation code couldn't be authenticated or your authentication code couldn't be verified? If the latter, check out this thread. Same thing happened to me and followed the advice by calling the number and got me straightened out. I could only call in home area, authentication error when roaming. If not, sorry, just thought maybe it would help.

http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/al...tml#post491543

[SlickGnome]

Thanks for that tip, it worked great. Apparently after the update, my phone attempted to authenticate off of 2 different carrier towers at the same time (Neither Alltel) and my phone was flagged as a clone. The rep was able to straighten out the account in like 30 seconds and then I was making and recieving calls fine.