Hi Michel,
As usual, thanks for your quick response.
I had already read that post and had made the changes suggested by Dave. It looks like changing the setting "support Javascript" option to disable is what made my phone display the behavior listed in my first post.
This morning I set the option to support javascript back to enable and now can switch my devices off and on again. FYI, this is a blackberry pearl phone running on a verizon network.
best,
Ron