'Walshed' Phones potential cause and fix posted by user

A registered member over at the XDA Devloper forums has posted a potential fix to the problem caused by the Chevronwp7.Updater, which leaves devices in an un-updatable state.  This has been posted by a user who has no other posts on the forum, it hasn't been recommended by Chris Walsh and isn't an official response from Microsoft.  We must urge you guys who are still awaiting the fix to hold off from attempting the below explanation.  But for conversations sake, we saw the need to share.

To see what ahodes posted in the thread, head on past the break.

From the XDA Post:

I did some digging and figured out what's gone wrong. Some phones have more than one language installed, but the Chevron updater only installs the language update for the language you choose. When Zune goes to update your phone, it tries to install updates for the rest of the languages to, but fails since the versions on the phone are incorrect. All that needs to be done is install the missing language updates. I have a Samsung Focus that was updated with the US English update. Looking at the log files for the update, it also needed:

  • German
  • Italian
  • Spanish
  • French

Using the Chevron updater as a base, I reworked it to install the missing languages. If you're using a Samsung Focus, you can get the exe I wrote to update my phone from [LINKREMOVED]. I can't promise that nothing horrible will happen, but my phone did update properly to 7392 via Zune after running it. 

If you have some other phone that uses a different combination of languages, it's just a matter of applying a different set of updates. I'm guessing the phones that work fine only had one language installed to begin with. Definitely no need to reflash the phone!

It's a sure interesting look as to why the issue is affecting devices and what's actually wrong. Mr Walsh shortly replied to this post:

So this "may" give you 7392. But this can also cause other issues if you install language packs that aren't supposed to be on your device. So I'd hold off on using this.

To prevent further issues with your device(s), please await for the fix to be approved by Microsoft so we can all get back on track and look forward to Mango. We will -- of course -- update you all as soon as word gets out about the submitted Walsh fix.

Source: XDA Dev Forum, via: 1800PocketPC

Rich Edmonds
Senior Editor, PC Build

Rich Edmonds was formerly a Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.