My BlackBerry Bold 9700 was hanging more than 3 times per day [Solved]

So, my Blackberry Bold 9700 was hanging with the dreaded clock in the middle of the screen.  It has 256MB of onboard memory where the OS and apps are installed and I know I was running low (down to 10MB).  But the OS6 version of the operating system didn’t leave much room for new apps. 
I uninstalled all the apps that I didn’t really use but still couldn’t get more than 10MB free.  It seemed like the deletes weren’t really adding to the free memory :(

After about 6 hours of use, my BB hung and showed the “please wait forever clock”!  A reboot was the only way – that means a battery pull, before I found out the quicker way of: holding “alt+Right_Shift+del” trick!
So, I was reduced to restarting the phone every 6 hours or so - #FAIL
I even scheduled a daily reboot using QuickPull
At the worst possible time eg: using the GPS to navigate, the phone would hang… I wanted to throw it away and get that Android phone which was next on the “which-phone-should-I-get” list.

I decided to take the plunge and start again – in other words: wipe the phone and all its contents – for the sake of my sanity.

I found a great blog that explained the process: BlackBerry 302: A complete wipe and clean install of your BlackBerry OS and listed tools to get the job done easily:
BlackBerry Desktop Manager (DM)
BlackBerry Swiss Army Knife (BBSAK)
I also found BBHTool and BlackBerry Master Control Program (MCP)
   

BBHtool is great in that it has a feature called “Shrink-a-OS” where you can choose which parts of the OS’s apps you don’t want to include on your phone – and so saves precious memory space!

I backed my phone up using BB DM and then followed the instructions and landed up with 122MB free before restoring all data and 3^rd party apps.
Then 76MB free (as indicated on phone’s My World)
I then restored the 3^rd party apps using BBHtool 
I then added 20MB of 3^rd party apps.
Then upgraded all my BB apps to the latest version
I now have 16MB free and I haven’t needed to restart the phone in over 24 hours… so far so good… I just wish the phone had more memory!  Or the OS used up less. 

Things to note:
*) when restoring a version of the OS, then the versions of the BB apps are the old ones that were shipped with the OS – so next time I will try to backup even the BB apps for restoration after the OS install.  Obviously, the workaround is to upgrade each app after the reinstall.
*) after the reinstall, you will need to accept each app’s terms and conditions and some will need you to re-enter the usernames and passwords
*) Setting up email accounts needed to be redone – but just entering of the passwords: I got an error "Sorry Unable to continue your session. Please login again".  To solve a problem like this can try the following tips. Sign in to mobile.blackberry.com from your Blackberry browser, then select the state, on the page that appears scrolls down until it finds Communicate - Email, then follow the data requested.
*) All info on my 2GB memory card was not deleted (whew)
*) My TelMap navigation software survived the reinstallation, but I lost the “My Places” list – that was the biggest casualty :(