Phone unlocking – Nokia phone from AT&T to T-Mobile Pay as You Go

For safety reasons I wanted my 10 yo to carry our unused Nokia 6555b GSM mobile phone on select occasions, but I didn’t want to pay $10 a month to add him to our family plan.

I looked at Pay as You Go plans instead. I could have gone with AT&T's Pay-Go plans, but, I don't trust 'em; I particularly disliked AT&T’s minute expiration policy. T-Mobile’s plan looked clean so I sent for a $10 SIM kit that includes some talk time as well. (Oops, see Update. They're as crooked as the rest of 'em.)

The kit came fairly quickly, and that’s where my education began.

In brief

1. The phone needs to be unlocked; switching the SIM Card was not enough. AT&T/Nokia will do this if you’ve been more than 3 months on a contract. In my case I’m 9 months into the contract and I’d switched to an iPhone, but I don’t think the switch mattered. The key is the 3 months. It’s not clear if this is an AT&T rule or a Nokia rule.
2. The unlocking procedure required extensive help from a saintly AT&T service rep who spent over 25 minutes on the phone talking to Nokia. At one point the AT&T rep had to read my email address over the phone and the Nokia rep had to transcribe it correctly. I’m amazed it worked.
3. After the phone you should do a full phone reset, which restores it to a factory state. (Maybe you could do this first). You might want to reformat the memory card while you’re at it.
4. The T-Mobile activation procedures is very painful.
5. When you’re all done you’re still stuck with lots of AT&T crapware, but it was no less annoying when the phone was an AT&T phone. Actually, since it’s now all inactive, it’s a bit improved.

I’ll provide select details below.

Unlocking the Nokia 6555b (legally)

The AT&T rep recommended leaving the AT&T SIM card in place during this procedure. The directions say it will work without a SIM card. I did have the AT&T card in place.

About 1-2 days after my AT&T rep went through the long phone call I received my unlock directions (obviously I’ve changed the numbers below). They were pretty scary looking for a fumble-fingered geek, but miraculously I got it in one …

This email contains the device unlock code you requested for your Nokia imei 111111111111111.

The unlock code is 111111111111111. You have 5 tries to unlock the equipment. Device unlock codes are specific for the imei number. Please verify the imei number on the equipment by entering *#06# on the keypad of the equipment before entering the device unlock code in the equipment. If this process is unsuccessful five times in a row, the phone will be permanently locked to the AT&T network.

The following process can be completed with or without the AT&T/Cingular Wireless SIM card in the phone

1. Press the # key once
2. Press the * key three times (will display a "P")
3. Press the * key four times (will display a "W")
4. Press the * key two times (will display a "+" sign)
5. Enter the unlock code 111111111111111
6. Press the * key two times (will display a "+" sign)
7. Press the 1 key
8. Press the # key one time

Well, that was impressively ugly.

Activating the T-Mobile account

Once you’ve done that you complete all the numbers on your “10 minute” activation card and enter voice recognition hell.

Yes, the T-Mobile bot insists on trying to recognize voices. It hated mine of course, all the bots do. The children’s advice didn’t help the bot. For numeric data entry I could mute the microphone and use the keypad. That’s the reason I’m still sane – it’s hard enough to enter 15 digits perfectly by pushing buttons.

There are a lot of buttons to push prompts to suffer through. It felt like it took hours. At the end the account activates. It’s supposed to take up to 24 hours, but I think it mostly activates in a few minutes to a couple of hours.

I’ll update this post in a while with my T-Mobile experiences. I believe I can switch back to AT&T by putting my iPhone SIM in the phone – such as when my iPhone battery is being replaced.

Update: A few more observations

• Communication is 32 cents/minute, rounding up to nearest minute (of course).
• A text message counts as a minute (32 cents).
• I thought minutes lasted a year, but turns out that's only true if you buy $100 at a time. Here's the fine print: "... Partial minutes rounded up for billing. Service is available for 90 days (one year for $100 refill cards) following activation. Void if not activated within 90 days from purchase. If you don't refill within 90 days after your last refill expiration date, you will lose your account. If you transfer your number to another carrier, you will lose your balance."
• I registered with my.t-mobile.com. You need to enter your phone number and then you get a text message with a password (see below). The same method is used if you ask for a password reset, so if you lose your phone anyone can get at anything in this t-mobile account. Better treat it as public. It doesn't seem to store the credit card number.
  
• The account balance takes a while to change after you add minutes. (Credit card security measure?)
• Probably because this was an AT&T phone the text messaging didn't work at first. It didn't get the password I requested. I poked around and decided to see if I could SEND a text message from the phone. I sent it to my Google Voice number so it wouldn't cost me anything to receive it. Once I sent a message it sort of worked, I got a ring/alert and the messages were buried away in an insanely obscure location on my Nokia 6555. I had to go to Messaging/Message Settings/Options then find "Smart Chip messages" then I could move the message to the Saved Items folder. After this, however, two more text messages simply appeared in my inbox. So maybe it will work now.

At this point I'm wishing I'd signed up with AT&T's Pay as you go plan as T-mobile doesn't seem to have any REAL advantages. I'll give it a bit more time, I think changing back won't be hard.

Once Google Voice is open again everyone in the family will get a Google Voice number, so phone swaps will be simple.

Update 6/21/09: Incidentally, T-Mobile has one of the least competent web sites I've ever seen. It hung on me once, and it's very persnickety about number formatting. I couldn't get my payment to submit because I entered my full 5+4 zip code. I don't think T-Mobile has a future.

Update 9/17/09: I was late to figure this out, but voice mail on a pay-per-use phone just burns costly minutes.

Not coincidentally, you can't disable voice mail from the web site, you have to find the secret number (877-778-2106), phone when they're open, say "representative, representative, representative ..."to fight through the voice menu demons, and ask to have it removed. You need to know the "PIN" you set on the phone.

This phone doesn't need VM.

Lessons from a stolen Mac

David Blatner has some good advice to help manage computer theft.

Some of these recommendations also apply to fire, which may claim more home computers than theft.

For my part I keep all laptop items with privacy concerns on an encrypted disk image, and I don't store the password in my keychain.

Loss of my desktop is more of a security problem, and it's time I began using an encrypted disk image there as well.

IE Menu bars gone? Can't add them back? Gray text? Maybe you did an IE reset

I went to use IE 7 and found that Windows Live Writer's Blog This tool was missing.

Not only that, but the Omea and Windows Live toolbars were gone, and they couldn't be added back in. The text for these menu bars was gray (or grey) and couldn't be selected.

I reinstalled Windows Live Writer, but nothing changed.

A bug? Virus? Corporate security error?

No, IE was working as designed. I'd foolishly used IE's (Internet Options) "Reset Internet Explorer settings" button when I was debugging another problem.

I really should have read the fine print about "disabled browser add-ons".

Here's how to reactivate your add-ons, menu bars and so on ..

How to reset Internet Explorer settings

The Reset Internet Explorer Settings feature disables all toolbars, browser extensions, and customizations that you install. To use any of these disabled customizations, you must selectively enable each customization through the Manage Add-ons dialog box.
Note Some toolbars may require that two or more controls are enabled to work correctly. These toolbars have controls for the corresponding Browser Helper Object and toolbar extensions. You can easily use the Manage Add-ons dialog box to enable any disabled controls that are from a trusted publisher.

"Manage Add-ons" can be found under IE 7's "Programs" tab. You don't need to click OK after each change. Sort by status and set all disabled to enabled, then click OK.

There is a genuine bug here by the way. It's "fine" to disable add-ons per the fine print, but the reinstall should have worked. The disabled add-ons apparently blocked the reinstall.

I used to think OS X had some decent security advantages...

Someone with credibility says not at all ...

Questions for Pwn2Own hacker Charlie Miller | Zero Day | ZDNet.com

... It’s really simple. Safari on the Mac is easier to exploit. The things that Windows do to make it harder (for an exploit to work), Macs don’t do. Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don’t have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you’d find in Windows.

It’s more about the operating system than the (target) program. Firefox on Mac is pretty easy too. The underlying OS doesn’t have anti-exploit stuff built into it...

If true, then the only security advantage of OS X is that fewer hackers are interested in exploiting it.

Reading onwards he's comparing OS X to Vista, not to XP. That does make sense, I'd not thought of OS X as being secure compared to Vista.

In his opinion Chrome on Vista is a very tough target, but nothing on Vista is trivially easy. By comparison everything on OS X is trivial. A good bit of the difference appears to be address randomization, a Vista feature that, think, was supposed to have been a part of 10.5 but didn't make the cut.

WDS networks with new Dual-Band AirPort Extreme and older AirPort Express

It's a mess and not properly documented, but mac.column.ted: Secrets of the Dual-Band AirPort Extreme has lots of advice on how it (more or less) works.

Apple's polish isn't quite as good as it once was.

Google Calendar Sync out of order - error 2016, connect to internet

It's been Google Cloud Heck month for me.

First Google Video Chat was malfunctioning. We didn't figure out the cause, but it's been better lately (thanks Justin). Then Google Reader became flaky, and the Google team was AWOL for a week.

Now Google Calendar Sync is balky (again), and I'm not the only victim. It's giving misleading "Please connect to the internet" and "error code 2016" error messages when I attempt to sync Outlook to my Google Calendar (where I also sync my iPhone via their Exchange sync service).

I've been trying to debug ...

Please connect to the internet to use Google Calendar Sync - This is an old problem and seems to have cropped up again - Calendar Help

...I tried uninstall/reinstall and deleting my Google Calendar and I tried resetting IE.

I'll check the link found in the log. I think Firesea might be on the right track. Something's timing out and Google Calendar Sync is producing a misleading error message...

... Google calendar sync log
gcal_server = https://www.google.com
gaia_server = https://www.google.com
user = myname@gmail.com
user agent = Google-SyncOL-0.9.3.5 Win-5.1/SP-3.0 Outlook-12.0.0.6316 Mode-3
Sync data file to use: 9770....75
Base time: 2009-03-17T18:51:00.000Z
Sending GET request to https://www.google.com/

calendar/feeds/default/private/full?max-results=25000&updated-min=2009-03-17T18:51:01.000Z&gsessionid=edfafdd....
SEVERE: GCalConnection::GetGCalXML -> status_code = 500, error_msg = Google Calendar Sync: Error syncing your calendar. Error code: 2016....
SEVERE: Unable to get events from GCal

My next debugging steps are:

1. Extract the magic feed url from the Outlook sync log and see what it generates.
2. Sync to a calendar on an unrelated Google account and try to see if it's account specific.
3. Turn off Exchange sync and see if the calendar will then permit Outlook sync
4. Wait for Google to fix it.

I'll have more to say on my feelings about "the Google Cloud" in an Gordon's Notes opinion post.

Update: Ok, definitely making progress. I set up a fresh, unused calendar on one of my Google Apps accounts. I was able to initiate a sync, stop the sync, then restart it. On restart the step of downloading existing data worked normally. The second sync completed. So the bug is specific to my primary gmail calendar, the one I sync via Exchange server.

Update: I went to http://m.google.com/calendar and I was unable to edit the calendar sync settings there. The checked boxes won't uncheck. I've seen this bug before and it's gone away without explanation. I've posted against an old post of mine on the Google Mobile Help forum. So now I'm thinking there are two connected bugs here.

Update: I disabled calendar sync in the iPhone calendar Exchange account settings, and, on a whim, I turned off calendar sharing as well. Then I tried http://m.google.com/calendar and this time I could uncheck all but my primary account calendar. Of course maybe a retry without disabling iPhone connections would have had the same effect. Then I (for the fourth time) removed all the items from Google Calendar for my primary gmail account. I was again able to initiate synchronization to my Gmail account, but this time I could also stop it and restart it.

During this latest work I noticed a NEW option in the iPhone settings for Google Exchange synchronization. You can now sync Google email via Exchange sync. I haven't seen this announced, so I'm guessing it's a new tweak. My hunch is that whatever Google did to enable email sync changed enough things on their exchange server that they secondarily broke the Outlook Sync.

I think I have another entry for my Synchronization is Hell list.

Update: Ok, I can now complete a full (one way) Google to Gmail Calendar sync and I can then repeat it. The key is the repeat, until now I couldn't do a repeat on my primary calendar.

I've also re-enabled my iPhone Google Exchange Calendar sync and added back the Calendars to http://m.google.com/calendar. The phone is filling up. Now I'll see what my Google Outlook sync logs say in the morning.

Except ... I'm now seeing "the user has exceeded their quota" messages in my transaction log. Could be I've stressed Google Calendar a little too much.

I'm getting warmed up for my post on what I fear the Cloud ...

Update 3/19/09: It's working again. I don't know if I really fixed anything of if Google fixed something during all my debugging attempts. I'd give it a 70% probability, because of how it played out, that turning off Exchange services, purging the calendar, then restocking it, then re-enabling Exchange services did fix the problem.

Update 3/26/09: I've been tracking the logs, and it looks like I get this error about 50% of the time now.

Update 4/21/09: After not synchronizing for a few days 2016 was back and persistent. This time it was easier to repair however. I removed all events from my Google Calendar (note I only push from Outlook to Google, I don' think bidirectional sync will ever be safe), then I opened my iPhone and waited until the corresponding iPhone calendar was empty.

I then put my iPhone in airplane mode as a convenient way to turn off all push sync events. I don't want to burden Google Calendar during the initial load. (If you try this approach and it fails I think you need to follow the more onerous disabling of iPhone sync I describe above.)

Once all downstream targets were purged I initiated a desktop sync to repopulate the Google calendar. The subsequent sync is very slow.

I think Google's Calendar app is getting more burdened and slower. My guess is that Google is cutting back on their infrastructure build-out and they're getting strained. Another reason to fear the cloud.

Update 4/22/09: I was back to the error code 2016 on my next sync, so it's still broken. I think I have to wait for Google to fix something. More posts on the old forum thread. I wonder if there's any support for this problem on paid Google Apps. Probably not since this is "beta". I did see a note on a Spanning Sync blog that they're seeing lots of bugs across multiple gCal APIs, so this looks like part of a bigger problem.

Update 4/27/09: I've tried every trick I know of, including disabling the iPhone sync service and moving the calendar from my personal account to a Google Apps domain calendar. The only difference is now when sync fails I get the "please connect to the internet" error message. If I purge the target calendar I get one good sync. I'm running out of ideas!

Update 4/27/09b: Ok, it's working again. That only took about a week to fix. Looks like another entry in my Synchronization is Hell catalog. Here's what I did in the end, with the key items in bold.

1. On my iPhone turned off Google Exchange Calendar sync.
2. On my PC turned off desktop Google Calendar Sync and deleted all data in \Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Calendar Sync\data_files.
3. In my target Google Calendar deleted all entries.
4. On my PC enabled Calendar archiving. I configured to archive all items > 6 months old and used File:archive to initiate a manual purge. I dropped the number of events from about 2,700 to about 600.
5. On my PC re-enabled Google Calendar sync (1 way to GCal) and did a sync. I repeated the sync a few times to ensure it was working (see support thread for details on my initial results).
6. Re-enabled iPhone Exchange calendar sync.

It's working. I'm guessing there's a practical upper limit of about 2,000 events for Google Calendar Sync.

Update 6/8/11: It worked pretty well for the past two years, but after a huge archiving of my Outlook calendar Google Calendar Sync choked again with 2016 and connect to the internet error messages. These messages simply mean it's not working. I repeated the steps form 4/27/-09 and it's good again. The sync mechanism breaks with large numbers of changes. Fortunately the "primary calendar" I sync with is in a special Google account -- deletion of a primary calendar is unthinkable for most users. Google Calendar Sync is abandonware; fortunately I expect not to need it much longer.

Process Explorer: What's sucking the life from my XP box?

My corporate XP box wanders off into the twilight zone several times a day.

Standard XP activity and performance monitoring tools like the System Monitor plug-in for Microsoft's Management Console tell me there's big time disk I/O going on, but not why. Suspects include antiviral software (which doesn't scale to modern TB drives), automated backup systems, corporate monitoring software, Windows Search, etc, etc.

An informed colleague tells me Microsoft's free Process Explorer is the key to digging deeper ...

Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you'll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.

The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work...