Installing BlackBerry Desktop on Vista
I got myself a BlackBerry, which I’ve never had before. It came with a software CD, but although the model I got is rather new (BlackBerry 8800), the software was an older version and I was immediately suspicious of its compatibility with Vista.
The first thing I noticed when I tried to install it nevertheless is that the installer is unbelievably slow – meaning it has long periods of doing nothing at all. Between the splash screen that comes up in the beginning and the point where the first wizard dialog of the actual installation process comes up, at least two minutes went by.
Much more importantly, the installation failed anyway. After what seems like a lot of wizard pages and an eternity of waiting time, I got an error message saying “Error 2738. Could not access VBScript runtime for custom action.“
I went to RIM to get the latest version of the software, as I assumed the problem had to do with Vista. Yet another horribly slow process – they required me to register with my shoe size to be allowed to download updated software, the session timed out several times so I had to restart the whole process, their web site is not compatible with Firefox, the download process sometimes runs in circles, bringing up the user registration page more than once, and they list three different files as part of the 4.2 SP 1 release, which turned out to point to the same download after all, once I’d worked my way through the exhausting download process three times. Way to go, RIM!
In the end I finally had the new version downloaded and I was glad to find that the copyright year in the splashscreen actually showed the software to be newer than what I already had – the version is given as 4.2.1 in both cases. Nothing changed with the horrible speed – or lack thereof, actually – and the result was also the same: Error 2738.
At this point I went to research some information about this, and I followed BlackBerry specific references first. Apparently a number of people have had this problem in the past, but the information I could find was largely from Vista pre-release days, and it didn’t amount to much either. Performing a clean uninstallation was one hint I got, but there wasn’t a single piece of the information on my system that I was supposed to delete. RIM themselves have an entry in a FAQ list of theirs, pointing to a knowledge base article that turned out to be no longer available.
In the end I found the reason for the issue, as well as the (then obvious) solution explained in an MSDN forum. I’m replicating Jamie Hollingworth’s info here, in case the forum article shouldn’t be there any more later:
Thank you, Jamie, that works nicely!
Now I finally have the software installed, it seems to work just fine. One more funny thing I noticed: even before I tried installing any of the software, I just plugged in the BlackBerry to see what would happen. A driver was installed that made me think there was actually something BlackBerry specific about it – something about the name, I don’t remember precisely. In any case, there was a drive installed on my system for a removable media, which I thought would probably be the SD card slot that the BlackBerry has. I don’t have a card in it so far, so I couldn’t verify that.
Now, the interesting thing is that while that driver seemed to be working, I saw a message on the screen of the BlackBerry: your USB port doesn’t deliver enough power, yada yada, there’s probably something wrong with your driver installation or the port you’re using to connect to your computer. Eh? Interesting… now that I have the software package installed correctly, that message is gone, but together with it the removable media drive is gone as well. Hm.
You bought a what?! Let me delete you from my contact list!
:)
Comment by Daniel Moth — 10/3/2007 @ 10:48 am - 1 year, 6 months ago
Ah ****, I shouldn’t have said anything
Comment by Oliver Sturm — 10/3/2007 @ 11:05 am - 1 year, 6 months ago
Thanks for you help Olivier!
Comment by Nicolas Grilly — 5/4/2007 @ 2:24 pm - 1 year, 5 months ago
Hey thanks - I dont have nor would EVER buy a BB - but this solved another issue I was having installing some enterprise software on Vista - THANKS!
~Jeremy
(HTC 8125 WindowsMobile 6…)
Comment by Jeremy Edmiston — 17/4/2007 @ 4:39 pm - 1 year, 4 months ago
I had the same problem with installing the software on Vista Ultimate… very very slow… but it always seemed to work. The reason why you don’t have the drive showing up on your computer for your SD slot anymore, I think, is because you have to set (on the BlackBerry itself) "Mass Storage Mode" on. I think the BlackBerry will prompt for you to do so when you plug it into your computer with a card in the slot.
Comment by Chris — 18/4/2007 @ 4:31 pm - 1 year, 4 months ago
Thank you for a useful information.
Comment by Kat — 27/4/2007 @ 7:32 pm - 1 year, 4 months ago
Dude,
Totally thanks. You just saved me tons of time trying to figure this out. You are the MAN.
Deacon Jones
Comment by deacon jones — 14/5/2007 @ 8:17 pm - 1 year, 3 months ago
I need help, i have windows vista and i tried everything and i keep getting that internal error 2738 and i went to command prompt run as admins. and type what you all said but its not working, is it because i have version 4.1.1 that came with my blackberry? it awont work i need serious help pleaseee
Comment by Chad C — 17/5/2007 @ 5:57 am - 1 year, 3 months ago
Thanks for the advice..Saved me a bunch of time..
Comment by rick — 19/5/2007 @ 5:46 pm - 1 year, 3 months ago
I tried it said vbscript.dll was registered……nothing. I ran a search for vbscript.dll, again nothing. HELP
Comment by phil — 29/7/2007 @ 6:54 pm - 1 year, 1 month ago
You are the man. Thank you so much. This made my life so much better.
Comment by John Trainor — 9/8/2007 @ 4:01 pm - 1 year, 1 month ago
Hi Oliver,
After much searching I discovered your fix - nice one! However, now that the Blackberry desktop has been installed on Vista Home Premium, I cannot get it to run! The window flashes up very briefly.
Did you have this problem too?
regards,
Mark Shupac
Comment by Mark — 11/8/2007 @ 10:05 pm - 1 year ago
I actually had to go to the SYSWOW64 directory on 64b Vista and run regsvr32 on vbscript.dll to get the darned software installed Grrrrrrrrrrr. But thanks, at least this article helped put me on the right path.
Comment by Mike Pierotti — 19/8/2007 @ 3:45 am - 1 year ago
many thanks friend. this was of utmost help
Comment by Sada — 12/9/2007 @ 8:27 pm - 12 months ago
Thank you, this definitely help me install Blackberry Desktop 4.2.2 on Vista Business Edition
Comment by Basil — 5/10/2007 @ 1:33 am - 11 months, 1 week ago
Hi Oliver, I followed all your steps above however, when I entered regsvr32 vbscript.dll I got the following error message "The module vbscript.dll was loaded but the call to DLLregisterServer failed with error code 0×80004005. Any clue on the next step?
Jo
Comment by jo — 26/10/2007 @ 7:11 pm - 10 months, 2 weeks ago
Hi Jo,
I had a quick look around and I found that this is a permission problem. You are probably not running the command as an administrator. Try right-clicking the icon for the "Command Prompt" and selecting "Run as Administrator" from the context menu. When you start the regsvr32 command from that prompt, it should work.
Comment by Oliver Sturm — 27/10/2007 @ 3:41 pm - 10 months, 2 weeks ago
Thanks for the tip! I was banging my head against the wall with this one.
Steve Lubman
Comment by Steven Lubman — 29/10/2007 @ 8:12 pm - 10 months, 2 weeks ago
Thank you, it seems to have addressed several support questions that I have been fielding. The concept of Microsoft protecting us from ourselves is really biteing us left right and center. And in a lot of cases, I don’t really want users to be making some of the changes described here. The latest version 4.2.2 SP2 seems to have addressed some of the problems, but what I can’t understand is why this installshield installation seems to be running like a dog, while other installshield applications don’t seem to be having a problem.
In the end, I was asked by someone to repackage the installation so that they could do a silent install on a bunch of work SOE machines… It works a treat, and there are is no annoying slowness, dialog boxes to confirm etc.
Now if I can only convince my copy of Kaspersky that installing blackberry desktop is not a Trojan.Generic trying to install itself onto Vista.
Adrian Hum
Comment by Adrian Hum — 2/11/2007 @ 12:24 am - 10 months, 1 week ago
Thanks,
That worked for me. Hard to believe that Vista would not have it registered. You saved me a ton of work. Thanks
Jerry
Comment by jerry — 2/11/2007 @ 12:46 am - 10 months, 1 week ago
This plus upgrading to the latest desktop manager worked for me. Much thanks for solving this!!!
Comment by Lou — 21/11/2007 @ 8:31 pm - 9 months, 3 weeks ago
the vbscript routine did not work for me and my version vista. what else can i do?
Comment by Andrew HK — 8/2/2008 @ 8:29 am - 7 months ago
Hi, Oliver
I read your solution, but I do not know why in my case not work, I sorry for my bad english, I´m Portuguese.
I cannot get it to run! The window flashes up very fast.
Did you have this problem too?
my vbscript.dll is on c:\users\roliveira\documents\Autocad 2008\Program Files\Root\Redist
when i run regsvr32 vbscript.dll the message is ok.
When I run blackberry desktop 4.3 it’s the same problem.
can you help me?
thank you.
Comment by Roberto — 14/3/2008 @ 5:27 pm - 5 months, 3 weeks ago
Hi Roberto - no, I wasn’t having any problems with flashing windows. Can’t help with that, sorry.
I’m wondering about the weird location of your vbscript.dll - I don’t know how it got there, but I guess it’s possible that this is not the right file somehow, or that the installation process doesn’t find it. Normally it’s going to be in c:\windows\system32… if you don’t have such a file there, you might want to try copying the one you have to that location and rerunning the registration, perhaps it helps. But if it doesn’t, you should still try to find out whether you’re using the wrong file. I’m sure there are enough alternate ones around on other computers or on the internet…
These are all not the best recommendations, I guess. Sorry about that - I don’t work for RIM, so you should complain to these people. I recently installed the newest software version, and while it went without any issues on one of my computers, it showed exactly the same problem on another. Apparently it still hasn’t been fixed - my workaround worked just like it always did though.
Comment by Oliver Sturm — 14/3/2008 @ 5:31 pm - 5 months, 3 weeks ago
FINALLY! It’s Alive! It’s Alive!
Comment by Chad — 25/3/2008 @ 10:15 pm - 5 months, 2 weeks ago
Hi, I ran into another problemk with BlackBerry Desktop 4.2 when trying to install under Windows Vista Business:
Error 1337 flashes and minds Invalid drive Y: (which I didn’t set up).
I fail to figure out how to get to the setting for addressing a new filing location - could anybody help?
Comment by bob — 3/4/2008 @ 12:23 pm - 5 months, 1 week ago
Hi Bob,
That sounds like a very weird problem you’re seeing. I’m wondering if there’s something funny going on on your machine - combination of factors: weird problem, can’t find a single useful thing in Google for "1337 invalid drive", and of course the error code itself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet).
Comment by Oliver Sturm — 3/4/2008 @ 1:41 pm - 5 months, 1 week ago
Hi Oliver,
I seem to have found a way: just create a new drive and name it Y - Desktop 4.3 (have changed to newer version in case it’s more vista-able) installs fine and works, but doesn’t seem to utilize the drive y at all…
Anyway, thanks for looking at the thing!
Comment by bob — 3/4/2008 @ 1:51 pm - 5 months, 1 week ago