How I finally upgraded the firmware on a Polycom CX700 running 1.0.522.73

SNAGHTML244d5f8bA long and sad story about trouble upgrading the firmware in Office Communication Server enabled phones, specifically the Polycom CX700. This particular problem manifests itself as follows: The phone logs on to the server successfully and gets almost to the end of the login process. Then it crashes and automatically reboots. This goes on in an endless loop, and is caused by the phone running software not compatible with OCS 2007 R2. I post this hoping that it will be of help to others on a similar quest.

The problem

For about a year now, since we started our OCS pilot, I’ve had a Polycom CX700 on my desk. Actually, it has spent the bulk of that time on a shelf at my desk. It was purchased as a test device along with a collection of headsets and other OCS enabled devices. Most of them worked fine, but this one I just couldn’t seem to get working. After a lot of fiddling about I was able to log in successfully with a test user that had never ever logged on to any other device or computer. I happily thought I had it fixed, but as soon as I switched to another user it went back to the same old pattern: logon, crash and reboot in an endless loop.

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