Modem blocked???

[MyWorld]

A friend of mine just upgraded his modem, but it fails to load on his PC.

He took it to a PC repair shop and they claim the modem is blocked.

* Can the modem (USB dongle) be blocked? If so what must he do now?
* What else can one try to get the modem to initiate?

I have never worked with Windows and these modems so I have no idea where even to start, any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Park@82]

Are you sure its blocked not bricked?

 

[cavedog]

Its illegal for them to network lock a cellphone due to anticompetitive behaviour. Usb modems I'm not sure but I don't think they network lock it anymore.

 

[MyWorld]

The funny thing is they can load it on other PC's, but it refuses to load on my friends PC.

He is bringing it here this afternoon and then I'll have a look at it.

 

[JimM]

There were problems with the Huawei E220 and certain USB chipsets. I'm not sure that this applies to the newer Huawei stuff. However, if this is the case and it's not a laptop then fitting a separate USB card will usually fix the problem.

 

[tmkid27]

a friend of mine cancelled a data contract with vodacom which included a K3805-z. understandably the data sim has been blocked, but since then the modem refuses to work, its not even detectable by the operating system.

when i plug it in, red light flashes and the virtual cd drive pops up and shows the setup/driver files. even when i try to run the setup exe file, i get a corrupt error message.

i've tried this on numerous computers. in the past i have been able to bypass the vmc software loaded on it and use another sim. but now i suspect that the dongle could be blacklisted as they do with lost or stolen phones. but can blacklisting leave the device completely non-operational?