I just got a Blackberry 7290 (an extra my brother-in-law had lying around) but couldn’t do anything with it because it was stuck on a password screen. An my BIL couldn’t remember the password so I went a searchin’ for info on how to reset the thing and start over. I searched on:
‘Blackberry 7290, hard reset’
‘Blackberry 7290, handheld is locked’
‘Blackberry 7290, reset button’ (note to anyone else trying to find this — the 7290 doesn’t have one!)
‘Blackberry 7290, password protected’‘Blackberry 7290, reset password’
None of the resulting pages had the right answer for me.
The solution? I decided to try and exceed the maximum password retries (in the case of my 7290, I had a max of 6 retries). Once I did this, it nuked all the data on the Blackberry and let me set it up from scratch. Perfect!
Thanks man, it works for my 7290 too! Luv ya
Comment by The Man — August 4, 2006 @ 10:54 pm
Thanks for the tip! Worked great!
Comment by bryce — August 7, 2006 @ 7:32 pm
hi rakesh ,i had the very same prob with a blackberry 7290 ,sent you an e-mail any help would be great ,thanks dave., dublin,ireland
Comment by dave — August 14, 2006 @ 7:48 pm
Terrific – but what if the password is not set? I have a handset from an employee who has since left the company. I want to perform a full reset on the device so I can give it to another user.
Any tips?
cheers
Comment by Ali — September 20, 2006 @ 7:57 am
I didn’t think it was possible to not have the password set on a blackberry… I think I remember trying to do this and being unable to not set the password. Anyways, if it’s set to “nothing” then you might just try and enter something several times. Doing this might eventually trigger the “you’ve entered your password too many times” scenario.
Comment by rakesh — September 20, 2006 @ 12:22 pm
If you go to Options, Advanced Options, Security, click on the Password setting and you’ll get a “Wipe Data” option. That worked for me.
Comment by Brian — October 13, 2006 @ 10:34 pm
i did the 10 atempts times wrong and my Blackberry 7290 came unlock from password it worked fime MUCHAS GRACIAS i am in Mexico this really works i am Glad that i find this blog Regards
Comment by kriztian — December 2, 2006 @ 6:14 am
THANKS FOR SHARING THIS MY PLEASURE
Comment by kriztian — December 2, 2006 @ 6:15 am
Hi, i faced the same problem too, but when tried keying 10 times wrong password, i got this error 507
And now i’m not able to do anything with it. Any suggestions
Comment by Isaac — December 5, 2006 @ 5:51 pm
all you have to do is go to settings – under options you will find -security- click password which gives option to wipe handheld
guaranteed
Comment by Paul Rothwell — December 7, 2006 @ 3:56 pm
Agree with Paul, all you have to do is to go to options–>security–>password and when you select that it gives you the option to wipe everything out. It asked me for a word “blackberry” to do so, but i am sure that if you have a password protection of your device you just need to introduce it. good luck to all.
juan
Comment by juan — December 18, 2006 @ 10:33 am
my phone is black berry 7290 but couldn’t do anything with it because it was stuck on a password screen. An my BIL couldn’t remember the password so I went a searchin’ for info on how to reset the thing and start over. i f you can teal me what i mast do,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Comment by saad — December 23, 2006 @ 6:08 am
I have an even tougher situation. My keyboard and thumbwheel are not working, so I cannot use any of the above techniques. Any other suggestions for a hard reset (short of running over with and SUV). Miss my Palm which had the hole in the back for a paperclip!
Comment by Dennis Hafley — January 17, 2007 @ 4:12 pm
This man should work for Blackberry……….lol……….but anywho good work now I can work on about 5 of them that I have that are like this. Thanks.
Comment by Levin — January 18, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
Worked like a charm. I’m very glad I found this page – it saved me a lot of grief. Thanks!
Comment by Vlad — January 18, 2007 @ 5:13 pm
Hello guys, I´ve all the errors, 144, 365… all of them, can you helpme?
Comment by miguelito — January 23, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
Thansk also.
You saved me much searching.
Comment by Bill Jacobs — March 1, 2007 @ 5:16 pm
Guys,
I purchased 2 old Rim BB Model r857d-2-5 for my kids to use. I tried the 10 wrong passwords but the unit said I had a security violation and it has locked. Any ideas? Needless to say my 9 year old is also looking on the internet for a solution. Any help will be appriciated.
Eddie/wa4dby@aol.com
Comment by Eddie — March 3, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
Hi:
I was playing around with my 2100t Blackberry and I reset the password. Stupidly, I could not remember what password I had and I have done all of the attempts. Now the phone is saying that it erased everything and it now has a picture displaying this. What should I do?
Comment by Jan — March 10, 2007 @ 6:10 am
Your tip is awesome, worked great for my 7290. Thanks for sharing.
Comment by raj — March 17, 2007 @ 11:49 pm
My password exceeded 10 times and now I just have an hour glass… no access whatsoever. Any ideas?? removing batt and sim card did not help.
Comment by Rob — April 30, 2007 @ 7:33 pm
i just get from my friend blackberry 7290 but i cant use that phone because is unlock,that phone from UK..
IMEI:357778000982405…any information e-mail to me route_mambo@yahoo.com…thank friend…
Comment by HAdi — May 29, 2007 @ 2:48 am
Hi all,
i have a blackberry 7290, it was a gift from a friend of mine, but he forgot a sort of password wich you have to enter when u put it on, it first asks for my pin code , until there all goes well, but then it asks for another password, i had 10 times , all of them are wrong, now its locked, the only thing i when i put it on is a white screen with a sandglass in the middle , i left it like that for an hour, and when i came back the screen was still the same ( white screen + sandglass ), i tried all sort of things now like:
Remove battery
looking for some kind of “hard reset” switch
But nothing works, anyboy had an idea ???
Thanx
Mark
Holland
Comment by Mark — May 31, 2007 @ 8:08 pm
good morning dear pals!
i am from Turkmenistan!please help me to do something with my blackberry 7290!
situation the following!
i was tru\ying to load some games from magmic!
i did some great action!
after loading a new one usb cable was disconected by chance and now blackberry cannot be switch on!
when i push on the button something like watch is arounding on the screen but it is not open!
i have desktop manager software but i cannot do anything as blackberry is closed!
please help
Comment by vladislav — July 4, 2007 @ 3:24 am
YESS THIS WORKED FOR ME ALSOO!!!
Comment by keepinltgangsta7 — July 5, 2007 @ 5:50 am
Thanx very very very much, mij bb7290 was fully flipped out, nothing worked and nou everything is working very fine
thank you
Comment by nicky — January 3, 2008 @ 10:06 am
Thanks This Worked Really Great.
Comment by kimberlin — February 15, 2008 @ 11:28 pm
thank-you so much for this info i have been looking everywhere after buying my blackberry on ebay and getting it locked i thought i wasnt going to be able to use my phone… so thank-you again
Comment by elle — July 15, 2008 @ 5:59 am
samething with my 7290 but after 10 wrong password guesses im stuck with that flipping timer for like forever, ive taken out the battery and put it back in, same problem….
any suggestions? email: mo@mopages.co.cc
thanks
Comment by Mofreeze.com — July 17, 2008 @ 10:27 am
My Blackberry 7290 keyboard was locked since 2005, is practically new, I ask for help everywhere, but no answer, my local shops wanted large ammounts of money,(over eighty dollars) to unlock it, but no garantee, and they charge for trying anyway. I went to see my carrier store ( Tmobile ), and those people think they work for NASA or something like it, their support is ” cero”
I found your page by chance…and you came up with the answer, I follow your instructions and you fix my problem, tank you very much for that, everything is correct,
and my berry is up and running again.
Thank you
Gerry
Comment by Gerry — August 14, 2008 @ 6:10 pm
Hello there,
I got this blackberry 7290 from a friend, He just gave me it and didn’t tell me the code, and I wasn’t asking for it.
So I went home to charge it, now I gotta enter a code, I tried blackberry but it wasn’t the right one.
Now I hear you guys talking about, entering 6 times wrong to get it reset:o
Will it reset everything? like
Turn the Blackberry on and don’t get to the starting screen?
Will it be black? like, it erased ALL it’s data itself?
Please reply,
Thank you.
~Joe
Comment by Joe — December 8, 2008 @ 5:33 pm
Wow it worked! It reset the phone back to it’s original state too!
Comment by Gary — December 12, 2008 @ 5:34 am