Hard rest of VX-6800

[old_school_dave]

Last Saturday I upgraded my VX-6600 to the VX6800, and everything is going OK, except one problem I'm hoping someone has seen before (and might know a workaround).

So I was playing with trials of different software, and did a hard reset via Settings > System > Clear Memory. Once the PPC came back, I would get an authorization error when trying to use the phone.

Today I went into the Verizon store to see why the phone stopped working. The tech there couldn't get it working, so he unboxed another 6800 for me. That one worked fine. Just for kicks, I had him do a hard reset (he did the stylus plus two soft buttons). After the reset (and *228 for programming), the second phone couldn't dial out.

It looks like to me that the hard reset is removing some VZW-specific information from the phone. The tech at VZW had someone on the phone who generated a new "A-key" (at least that's what I overheard).

So my phone is working again, but I'm pretty sure the next time I go to hard reset, the phone function will be toast again. Has anyone run into this issue? Having to call VZW after every hard reset just doesn't seem right to me.

Also, is there a different between the "software" hard reset I did, and using the soft reset plus holding down the two soft buttons?

Thanks! Dave