Getting my fiancées' Blackberry to sync: Error Code - 0x80040fb3 Check Documentation

This is the post I alluded to "really wanting to write" in the obligatory holiday acknowledgment post immediately preceding this. This falls under the category of "more google juice to posts solving a problem I had" category. I post on this blog, and not in any of the blackberry forums because I am not a member of any of the blackberry forums, and I hate most blackberry sites as well as forums in general.

Long story short, my fiancées blackberry has not successfully synced with her desktop for quite some time now. Attempts to do so have produced a dialog box with the error in the title. Google turned up some links to the problem, but she was not able to resolve the problem. Today I finally had the time to sit down and fix it for her while she took a nap.

One of the better forum threads on the matter exists here. It doesn't describe the exact problem she had, but it has enough useful information to lead you in the right direction. The link to the blackberry knowledgebase article on how to turn on logging was broken, but it provided the KB number ( KB01451) so google found it for me.

The exact problem in her case was that two outlook contacts had corrupt pictures. It was a hard to identify this because when an outlook contact has a bad picture in outlook 2003, the image basically becomes invisible. I will use two screenshots to illustrate the issue. One has a contact with no image, and the other has a contact with a corrupt image:

Contact without Image


Contact with corrupt image



As you can see, in the case of a corrupt image, there is no indication that the contact has an image.

So after all that research, and the realization that the images were corrupt, the final steps to resolve the matter were as follows:

1. Turn on logging.
2. Attept to sync
   
3. When you get the error message, before dismissing it open C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Research In Motion\BlackBerry\Intellisync\tif.log
4. Identify contact with the corrupt picture.
5. Open Microsoft Outlook
6. Select the contact in question.
7. Right click on the grey area that should be a picture and select "Remove Picture"
8. Dismiss the sync error and attempt to resync.
9. Repeat until the syncing suceeds.
10. Comment on this blog, a blackberry forum, or elsewhere of your experience.
    

Obligatory new years day post

First an explanation on why I find this post obligatory. I want to write another post, and it happens to be new years day. I feel I should acknowledge the new year to my vast lack of readership.

First of all, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Boxing day, or whatever quazi winter solstice related holiday it is you celebrate. I also hope you enjoyed your new years eve/day celebrations and have a prosperous new year.

Second, its time to bore you all with a bit of self reflection. Some notable events and achievements for 2009:

1. I began work at a new company, achieving my long time goal of getting a job in Manhattan. For some reason it has always been easier for me to find jobs in Suffolk County than Manhattan.
2. Related to the previous, commuting by subway has allowed me to read so many books I got a Library Card from the NYPL. The achievement of note is more that I have read a lot, than getting a library card.
   
3. I took over the Long Island PHP User Group moving our meeting location to InVision.
   
4. I became a Zend Certified Engineer in PHP5.
5. Most important, I proposed to my girlfriend, and she said yes.

My online habits have altered. For the first time I began doing the following online:

1. Using Twitter
2. Listening to podcasts.
3. Participating in the stack overflow trilogy.
4. Using github.