Problems with HTC Wildfire S... faulty? no signal

[squarehead94]

Hey all, picked up a wildfire S today cheaply just until I repair my S2.
Anyways, seller said he believed it was locked to orange, i was a bit suspicious because if this was the case he'd try an orange sim in it and sell it for more...
Anyways, I bring it home, o2 doesnt work, as he said, says limited service on the screen. go to settings, try to search for networks, sees a network, i click the network and it says "Your sim card does not allow to connect to this network." Even though it is the network of the sim card. Had this same issue with o2, vodafone and orange, as i tried all their sim cards. was tested on 3 as well, same issue.

Ive seen on google some people going into the hidden menu and turning off the radio and turning it back on, (source: http://thewichitacomputerguy.com/blog/how-i-fixed-your-sim-card-does-not-allow-connection-network-g1) and it says this on other forums, ive tried many of these solutions to no avail.

I tried a factory reset in the recovery menu, still no joys. I saw somewhere about cleaning the gold contacts on the phone where the sim card goes, what would i clean these with? also, is there anything else that could cause this? Really hope it isnt a duff blocked phone
cheers!

 

[Myshra]

So... you didn't actually try it before you bought it? Does the phone have a network marking on it like the orange logo? Phone up the network if it does and ask them if they can do an IMEI blacklist check on it, sounds nicked to me.

You can clean a SIM with Isopropyl alcohol (careful, it's really flammable) but it is more likely to be a duff phone if you're using a SIM you know works as SIM contacts are coated in a non-tarnishing metal.