Spinning hourglass, Blackberry never finishes booting up

Question

I searched the forums but none of the "spinning hourglass" problems seemed to match mine.
I have a Blackberry Curve 8320. It's not even a month old.
I routinely plug it into the USB port of my desktop computer to charge it in the evenings. Just now - perhaps an hour ago - I noticed the screen blinking on and off. At the same time, the computer started making its "an item has been connected to the computer" beep. Every time the screen flashed, the computer would re-detect the Blackberry and make a "found new item" beep. I looked more closely at the BB and its screen was totally gray with a spinning hourglass in the middle. The red LED was on. Then everything would go dark (the screen and the LED) and the computer would beep twice, then the BB lit up again with the same hourglass and LED. Over and over again. Turning off, rebooting itself, rebooting for maybe 6 seconds, then turning off again.
This literally happened out of the blue while I was doing nothing BlackBerry related on the computer. Heck, the Desktop Manager wasn't even open. I was playing Everquest 2 if for some reason that matters.
Of course my first thought is to hard reboot - pop the battery, wait a few minutes, and put it back in. No luck, still endlessly rebooting.
Most solutions I've read seem to suggest that my BB operating system has gone corrupt, or that I simply "need a new phone." I guess I might be able to get a new phone, but I'd like to recover my data. But since the BB won't stay booted and connected to the computer, the "Backup" option never even lights up on the Desktop manager. It's a gray unclickable button.
I tried plugging the BB into the computer while its batter was out, but that doesn't seem to be helping. The Desktop Manager still can't find it.
Has anybody ever heard of this problem? Like I said, the most astonishing thing is that the BB was just sitting there in front of me when it stopped working. Literally nothing was being done with it - it was just charging.

Answer 1

Yes, I installed the tmobile handheld software onto my computer. Nothing looks any different in the Desktop manager, though.
What version of the desktop manager are you using? It seems like you have some buttons I don't.
Here is exactly what I do:
Remove battery from BB and plug it into the USB port. Several "dings" let me know something was detected (I actually count several connect - disconnect - connect dings before it finally settles down)
 From the main menu of the desktop manager I can see that it's version 4.6. It says "Device Connected PIN: None" at the bottom of the screen. I can click on this and manually select the USB-PIN for my bb. But it still says "None" after I do that.
I click on Application Loader.
I now have two choices: Add/Remove Applications or Update Applications. I think I was mistakingly clicking on Add/Remove earlier, because I do see an Advanced button under Update Applications. 
So I go to Update Applications. There is nothing on the list - it says "No Software Update is Required for your Device."
There is the Advanced button! I click it and it brings me to an interface that looks almost exactly like the Add/Remove Applications one. 
I see only one application on the list, a little shopping list app I downloaded last week. I select nothing and click Options.
Now a popup window appears. First it says Backup Options and has an option to backup my data automatically. Second it says Device Data Options and has 2 options which are grayed out and I can't click on them.  I can click OK or Cancel to get back to the previous screen. 
After this I'm not sure what to do. I haven't checked the 2 boxes the instructions say to check (without telling me what those options are!).
edit:
 I can also see an "Options" button on the Update Applications page, but it's grayed out and I can't click it.
Message Edited by namelips on 10-17-2008 02:54 AM