‘Could not start the BlackBerry MDS on Local Computer. Error 203: The [...]]]> Today on one of our servers one of our users reported that there Blackberry had stopped receiving emails, when i looked at the service i noticed the blackberry router and MDS service had stopped, the router restarted ok but the MDS service kept saying

‘Could not start the BlackBerry MDS on Local Computer. Error 203: The system could not find the environment option that was entered.’

After a little searching i found out it was down to the Blackberry Enterprise Server was not pointing to jvm.dll possibly due to a resent Java JRE upgrade.

The solution was to point it to the correct location in the registry. Taken from the Blackberry Knowledge Base KB04329

To resolve this issue, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Registry Editor.
2. Go to the registry key listed above to check for the ImagePath string value.
3. If the ImagePath string value does not exist, repair the BlackBerry Enterprise Server installation through Add/Remove Programs. This updates the BlackBerry Mobile Data Service registry keys. For more information, see the BlackBerry Enterprise Server Installation Guide.Note: For BlackBerry Enterprise Server software version 4.1.3 to 4.1.6, the option to repair is not available. Re-apply the service pack to replace the registry key.

   If the ImagePath string value exists, double-click it and type the correct path to the jvm.dll file in the Value data field, as shown in the following example for BlackBerry Enterprise Server software version 4.1:

   “C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\MDS\bin\bmds.exe” -s jvmpath=”C:\Program Files\Java\<JRE folder>\bin\client\jvm.dll” -XX:+DisableExplicitGC-Xss64K -Xmx256M -Xms96M -XX:NewSize=32M -XX:MaxNewSize=96M-XX:NewRatio=2 classpathdir=”C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\MDS\classpath\\” wrkdir=”C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\MDS\Servers\<server_name>\\” webserverdir=”C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\MDS\webserver\\” -log.console -rbes “<server_name>”

   where <server_name> is the name of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server MDS Connection Service and <JRE folder> is the name of the JRE folder located in C:\Program Files\Java\.

4. Press ENTER and close the Registry Editor.
5. Restart BlackBerry MDS from the Windows administrative tools.