Restore original IMEI

[duerer]

I was working in a remote part of the Gambia and had the phone unlocked for a local SIM. When I returned to the UK my original Vodafone SIM worked fine for about a week. After an automatic update I got the "Not registered on network" message. Looking into it I noticed that the IMEI had changed. This seems to be a common practise in Africa. Vodafone help was no help at all in restoring the original IMEI and suggested a new motherboard.Is there a way to get the proper IMEI back on the phone?

[hrym]

This seems very unusual and also bad practice.   I Googled "change IMEI" and found various places offering instuctions on how to do that, but they all seem to require a rooted device, so I'm not quite sure how the local service can have done it.

If the phone worked OK initially, it suggests that the changed IMEI wasn't itself a problem with the network and the only other thing I can think of is that the one it's changed to has been blocked.  

This is going to be a tricky one to solve as changing the IMEI will almost certainly have voided the warranty.   You may have to go to an independent repairer, but I'd also try to find out why the phone won't work first - as it happened after an update, that looks like a possible cause.   It might be worth trying a factory reset to see if that resolves things.

[duerer]

Thank you for your thoughts. Vodafone assured me that the changed IMEI is not blocked by them but by another provider. They could not tell me by whom and why this should affect my usage of vodafone.  However, several of my checks (checkmend etc) were negativ in so far thet this imei does not belong to a stolen or lost handset.

[hrym]

A blocked IMEI is blocked across all networks and it's also usually possible to see which network did it.  My guess would be that the one you have was perhaps already blocked, though that doesn't explain why the phone worked for a short while.   I'm also (as I said) slightly suspicious of the fact that the phone stopped working after an update - it might be co-incidence, but I'd still look at that and try a reset, juts in case.  It would be part of any repair process, so you won't have lost anything.   Back up your data and make sure your contacts and calendar are fully sync'd first,. of course.

We're definitely in voided warranty territory here, so your chances of a cost-free fix are small unless you root the device and change the IMEI yourself - a risky process, I'd have thought.  Though, if the phone's unusable, you might think you have nothing to lose.