Stuck in a boot loop - Expert advice urgently required! - Desire Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Ok I really need XDA to help my friend out in his hour of need (Yes it is my friend, honest!)
Having become impatient with HTC's will they/won't they HTC Desire Gingerbread support, he decided it was high time to root his o2 HTC Desire GSM.
Using Unrevoked he rooted his handset and installed Clockwork Mod recovery. So far so good. What he didn't have however was S-Off - that was to be the next step. Before going ahead he decided to make a Nandroid backup. Again so-far so good. Then he decided to restore that backup. This is where it goes wrong. After restoring he is stuck in a boot loop (and he's tried wiping cache etc etc, so that's not the reason). He can get back to recovery (So I don't think he's bricked), but can't seem to install any fresh ROM's such as the latest Miui. I've got a feeling the roms he is trying to install are trying to write to /system which is currently protected due to the lack of S-Off, but this is at best an educated guess. So a couple of questions:
1: Are there any rom's he can install without S-Off being required?
(Were there custom rom's pre S-Off that could be installed? - If so can you link to one - I was under the impression that achieving S-Off only became possible at the end of last year, so if so how did or could you flash a custom rom beforehand?)
2: Would flashing the official HTC o2 rom through clockwork mod recovery get him back in action? If yes, I presume this would remove root and custom recovery?
I would add that he's fairly new to the rooting scene and ADB is probably a little advanced for him at this stage.
Thanks in advance,
Robbie.

OriginalThinking said:
1: Are there any rom's he can install without S-Off being required?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm no expert, but I flashed Leedroid v2.5 while S-on, without a problem. Download it from the thread (I can't post links yet, sorry, but if you put 768703 into the search box, it's the top result), put the rom on the sdcard (via pc) boot to clockworkmod, and install update. May not be an ideal solution, but maybe worth a try?

There isn't any rom which requires s-off.
Flashing the official o2 htc rom will set the phone to state before using unrevoked.
Which hardwarerevision does your friend's desire have? Check out this way:
1.) Download connectbot from android market
2.) Start it, set "local" and write any name
3.) Type
Code:
cat /pro/mtd
Now look at the column "erasesize". If there stands a 40000, your friend's desire has a newer hardwarerevision. With this the usually flashed recovery by unrevoked (clockworkmod recovery) does not work.
You have to flash a different recovery, amonra 2.0.1.
Download the img here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20471345/SUroot/Tools/Android/Recovery/recovery-RA_2.0.1.img
Then, start unrevoked, file>custom recovery>choose downloaded recovery. Now run unrevoked again. Now your friend should be able to flash things like custom roms from recovery.

Related

[Q] Flashing recovery image by ADB - how to?

Hi folks,
For some reason my Amon Ra recovery is now refusing to flash zip files and it look as if I'll have to reflash the recovery itself. Can I do this via ADB on an S-ON phone, and if so, how? If not, is there an alternative method? Unrevoked isn't working at this point as I have already wiped my old ROM.
Background: I think I b*ggered the recovery by having the USB cable connected at boot time. There is a mention somewhere of Clockwork mod misbehaving in these circumstances, and I think the same may apply to AR. The phone will boot into AR, but AR won't load/flash any zip files.
Please help!
Via ADB? No.
S-ON? No.
You have to be s-off to flash another recovery via FASTBOOT.
Try taking out the battery and re-enter AmonRA, see if that works. Also what error you get?
Thanks Davebugyl!
Sorry, no joy. There is no error at all, just AR refusing to flash the zip. I've had this once or twice before, and usually by shutting the phone down and restarting I got AR to work again. Not now.
I'm happy to S-OFF the phone with Alpharev, only I'm not sure you can do that with no ROM installed. Any thoughts?
Well the phone must be booted to use AlphaRev's S-OFF method. Do you have any nandroid backups? You can use one to boot up, then S-OFF.
If not, then the only thing what comes to my mind is to flash a RUU and root/S-OFF again.
I have a nand backup but I can't get it to boot. Can you flash an RUU to an S-ON phone or would you need a Goldcard for that - which I don't have..
If you are unlocked (HTC_WWE) - then it should go without a goldcard.
Alternative solution in second link:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=619153
http://www.nexusoneforum.net/forum/nexus-one-development-hacking/644-super-noob-guide-unlocking-bootloader-modacos-rom-amon_ras-recovery.html
The latest is for the Nexus one, but should be working on the Desire.
Many thanks for your help! Will try that shortly, and let you know how it went. The phone was a German T-Mob when I bought it but it's not locked to any network (I bought it and am using it in Switzerland). Fingers crossed!
Update: I found an old Nand backup which did work, and successfully re-rooted with Unrevoked to install a fresh copy of Clockwork recovery, and went S-OFF with Alpharev. Great stuff, ŧhanks for your advice!!

looking for guide

I'm looking for guide step-by-step howto install CM7 on HTC Desire, Phone is not rooted so this need to be done first, also need some guide.
Problem is that phone is PVT4 40000, is there any way to install that CM7, S-OFF nad other stuff without problems?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=696189
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=788044
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1016084
Partially wrong/right.
You have PVT4 so when you root you need to have AmonRA recovery installed instead of CWM recovery (this comes with Unrevoked). Download the Amon recovery and when you run unrevoked, don't plug your phone in. Go into the menu, top left in the program, select custom recovery and select the AmonRA.img file. This will flash the right recovery for you. I should point out just in case that when you have rooted, backup your current rom by going into recovery and going to backup and restore then backup.
S-Off isn't necessary but you can do it. All you do is go to http://alpharev.nl, download the Flash Utility, burn it to CD or USB and boot it in the POST check. Read the stuff on the utility and also follow the instructions on the website.
After you have rooted at least, you can flash CM7 (if your S-Offing then do this after that). Put CM7 on your phone and gapps (links are both in the CM7 thread), then flash CM7. Reboot then flash gapps then your done.
So as I've understood, first CM7 then S-OFF, right?
mesiu84 said:
So as I've understood, first CM7 then S-OFF, right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I own a PVT4 Desire as well and what I did was: first root it by Unrevoked, then update Clockworkmod Recovery, S-OFF and CM7. Worked as a charm.
mesiu84 said:
So as I've understood, first CM7 then S-OFF, right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just dont flash any d2ext ROM if you wanna S-OFF, some stock one would be best.
After you S-OFF and change partition table to your preferences, flash the ROM you wanted. ;-)
I've got warning "is your firmware to new?" is there any way to fix this without wiping all data?
fixed by installing once more unrevoked (normal) there were errors when entering recovery, and then I've once more installed unrevoked but this time using amon-ra and all is OK now, so the phone is rooted and S-OFF, tomorrow I will try do nandroid backup and update to CM7

need Recovery for HBoot 93 SLCD

Hi,
I have a TELUS HTC Desire that was already rooted when I got it.
It has HBOOT 0.93
I didn't know that my phone was SLCD so when I used ROM Manager to flash recovery, it messed up my recovery.
If I go into hboot, and press down arrow to boot into recovery, I get the black screen with the little phone and the red triangle with the exclamation mark.
I was desperate enough to try the ClockworkMod Recovery for the HBOOT 0.83 (ClockworkMod Recovery v2.5.0.1 SLCD)
from hxxp://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=748618
flashed that on with UnrEVOked but didn't work. Recovery is still messed up.
I googled and searched for a week to find something for HBOOT 0.93 but I never find anything. Everything is for 82, 83 and 92. There are other people who asked about 0.93 in other threads but there are never answers to them.
Does anyone know of a proper ClockwordMod recovery img or ANY recovery img I can flash for my HBOOT 0.93
My phone is already android 2.2 but i would really like to flash to LeeDroid
Should I reflash my phone with the RUU to get rid of any dmg done? The only thing i'm afraid of is that my phone will be unrooted because of the RUU reflash and I can't find a way to root it.
If it's not possible to use UnrEVOked or Rom Manager to install LeeDroid because of HBOOT 0.93, I'm willing to manually do it.
But will the LeeDroid flash properly onto my phone if it's HBoot 0.93?
Does the flashboot thing when i boot into the HBOOT work for installing custom ROMS if I can't get into recovery? I noticed it will load images...but not sure exactly what the fastboot thing is suppose to do.
Thanks!!
HBOOT 0.93 is not the problem, neither is your SLCD. Use fastboot to flash your recovery, I suggest use either AmonRa 2.0.1 or CWM 2.5.1.8.
CWM from ROM Manager isn't the best recovery for your HBoot as I think it flashes 2.5.0.7 which is no good on your HBoot.
You can't flash a ROM from fastboot, you need recovery. Once you've done that, LeeDrOiD will work fine on your setup, but I would suggest you study up a lot more before proceeding, for one thing, it's easy to find a lot of info on HBoot 0.93 on this forum, secondly, get to know fastboot etc as you needs to know this for when things go wrong with cheat/easy methods like ROM Manager.
Take your time, be confident you know what you are doing it before you do it, you don't want to brick your phone.
Both of you need to know quite a bit more, but especially the OP...
But no he can of course not flash an unsigned recovery from fastboot without being s-off, and from the sound of the first post I'm confident he's not.
ghalalb is right though when he states that this has nothing to do with your bootloader version or slcd, and i really can't imagine how you can get the simple instructions on here wrong, but please simply use unrevoked via usb. It comes preloaded with a perfectly fine recovery for you, and also i believe you should really reconsider the decision to hack your phone with this little knowledge on the subject.
Also 2.5.0.7 vs 2.5.1.8 has nothing to do with hboot versions.. Both will work fine if flashed correctly, but the problem with just making rom manager flash the recovery is, that it is not quite up to date, so it does not actually flash anything. It just downloads an update.zip file, which loads the recovery when flashed. This fixed the problem of not being able to flash a custom recovery back before unrevoked came around. And to correct you on another thing you got wrong, yes you can actually flash a zip file containing something like a rom from fastboot if you are s-off. It will probably just not work exactly the same way, as the recoveries does.
That's interesting that you say hboot version and slcd has nothing to do with the ClockworkMod when other threads are very specific about which clockworkmod version you should use depending on your hboot and if your phone is slcd or not.
Also last time I did an update to the phone, it just used the fastboot. Didn't go into recovery.
I followed the exact instructions for unrevoked but an error occurrs when it tries to unroot...All I wanted to do was flash the recovery and not unroot the phone since it's already unrooted. So probably that's why it was having problems. But the recovery was still messed up after unrevoked did it's work.
I wonder if part of the problem is because I'm using a test image and not the actual production image for the phone. Which is probably another reason why the phone was already unrooted.
I'll try to reflash my phone using the RUU for a production image and try Unrevoked again just so everything is clean from the start
Trust me it doesn't matter. The only problem was on slcd phones back when they first came out, where cwm didn't contain the drivers for the new screen.
That is why it says it's for 0.83, as back then 0.83 was equal to slcd and all amoled models had come with 0.75 or 0.80. But now after the newer updates everyone is on 0.93 or so, and all newer cwm recoveries will work for both amoled and slcd. So no there is not a specific recovery for every bootloader, and there is no way a flash from rom manager messed your recovery up, as it never flashes anything.
And i think you might need to slow down and think about what you are doing? Because you talk about unrooting with unrevoked, and unrevoked will probably try to root your phone If you use unrevoked correctly you will have it working fine.
Also you say last time you updatet it, it used fastboot? updatet it officially? As then there is a reason you have the stock recovery. But try using the ruu and then go back to rooting using unrevoked or just keep it stock, as it might not be a good idea trying something without knowing what it does.
edit: and the screen you get with the phone in a triangle with an exclamation mark doesn't mean anything is wrong. It's just the stock htc recovery... If you press vol-up+power(or vol-down+power i don't remember) when you see this screen, you get a simple menu, which lets you flash update.zip and erase data.
mortenmhp said:
edit: and the screen you get with the phone in a triangle with an exclamation mark doesn't mean anything is wrong. It's just the stock htc recovery... If you press vol-up+power(or vol-down+power i don't remember) when you see this screen, you get a simple menu, which lets you flash update.zip and erase data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your response I thought that the triangle screen was bad since I tried the volume stuff and I couldn't get to the screen.
But if that's the stock htc recovery, then that means the clockworkmod recovery wasn't flashed properly?
I will try the keys again when i get to the recovery state later.
Actually I was having problems with UnrEVOked because my phone was ALREADY rooted. So it was trying to do something that was already done which is probably why it failed. I only needed unrevoked to flash the recovery...I didn't need it to do anything else but the recovery.
What I have on my phone right now is not the official load. It has test keys and crap in it....
Anyways, I'll see if I can get into the recovery menu properly before doing the RUU flash to have a clean start.
Ok Unrevoked should work fine anyway though. It just flashes a recovery and the su binary plus the superuser app. So if you are rooted it will just overwrite them. Your problem is far more likely to be a driver problem.
I rooted the old way as well(the one only allowing test keys signed roms) and then i used fake flash from rom manager until alpharev s-off came along, and now i just flash everything but roms from fastboot, it's far easier.
driver problem?
I followed the unrevoked instructions and my computer recognizes the phone while it's in bootloader
i can also adb shell into it when it's just normally powered on etc
oh and to answer previous question, yes i updated to 2.2 using fastboot
i put IMG99.zip onto my sdcard
powered on while holding the volume down for fastboot
it went and found the image on my sd card and grabbed it...and asked if I wanted to update...and viola...2.2
my phone was...2.0 or 2.1 when i first got it i think...i forgot what it was before 2.2
that's why i asked if anyone just stuck a custom rom into their SD card and tried using fastboot before....seems like everyone these days use things like rom manager, unrevoked etc >_<
I would think that the fastboot would find the zip file and can unzip and load it just like how it did the testkey one i did before....but i thought i would ask before i tried....maybe i should wait next week until i'm at home and have sd card readers in case anything goes wrong so i can recover the phone easier lol
There is a reason why people don't do that.. When you flash that way via fastboot, it only allow zip files signed by HTC, if you are s-on, and those write everything on the system to stock, which means you lose root and custom/modified recovery.
You could potentially do it that way if you were s-off, but the bootloader flashing utility does not allow as sophisticated commands as the custom recovery does, so everything in the original roms is actually packed in .img files for every partition.
All good advice.
I offered mine as my Desire would not accept CWM 2.5.0.7 (to this day it doesn't), and it would only accept CWM 2.5.1.8 or AmonRa 2.0.1. (as they work on PVT4 with a 40000 page) As for unrevoked, the only version that works for my Desire is 3.2.1, the latest (which I think is 3.3.2) doesn't work on my Desire.
It seems the longer these phones are around, the more individualised rooting and recovery has become, so advice should maybe always come with a word of caution.
***this is what worked for my device***
TinyAggie, I hope you are getting there!
Yep new page size will require the modified cwm for it, but it still has nothing to do with hboot version. However the other recoveries should flash ok as well, they just won't work well for installing roms(gave some error), which he hasn't come to yet
ghalalb said:
All good advice.
I offered mine as my Desire would not accept CWM 2.5.0.7 (to this day it doesn't), and it would only accept CWM 2.5.1.8 or AmonRa 2.0.1. (as they work on PVT4 with a 40000 page) As for unrevoked, the only version that works for my Desire is 3.2.1, the latest (which I think is 3.3.2) doesn't work on my Desire.
It seems the longer these phones are around, the more individualised rooting and recovery has become, so advice should maybe always come with a word of caution.
***this is what worked for my device***
TinyAggie, I hope you are getting there!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I found the same thing that only unrevoked 3.2 would work with my device.
I finally managed to flash the custom rom and is what i did to make it all work >_< Maybe it'll help someone else
I started with a fresh official load by flashing the RUU.
Then I used unrevoked that you can download from their website
I still got an error. CID missing. I go searching for it and it seems like a common enough error that the unrevoked team had addressed it
Because of the error, it was not able to unroot and flash recovery properly. The only thing it did was s-off.
So 2 ways to get root/recovery on your phone
1. Manually....find a PB99IMG.ZIP file that has root in it and flash that, then you can either use rom manager to flash the recovery or do it manually as well.
I created my own PB99IMG.zip with the recovery image of clockworkmod for desire using the android info .txt file I had in my other PB99IMG that contained the root access. Put the PB99IMG.zip into your SD card, go to Flash boot and let it do it's magic.
2. Easier way, get unrevoked 3.2 ... There was a warning for using it. Apparently you should only use the 3.2 version if you get the CID error.
But with unrevoked 3.2 it will give you superuser and the recovery image without you doing anything so it's easier.
So after I finally got Root, I backed up my sd card onto my comp.
Then I partitioned my SD card using ROM manager.
Once that was done, i flashed into recovery to do a backup.
After that I tried using ROM manager to flash leedroid...
it looked ok but it never managed to get past the splash screen after 20mins so I pulled the battery and rebooted
Same problem so I decided to flash manually.
Went into recovery and cleared everything then flashed the rom from SD.
Now I'm on leedroid
So far it looks exactly the same as the stock rom. It has everything I need so I'm happy.
I hope this helps anyone with similar problems.
Sometimes you just can't take the easy way out and have to do things manually

[Q] Alpharev Recovery

I have recently S-Off my phone which after much reading was a 5 min job, simply upload a rooted stock and then run Alpharev; perfect. Once I rebooted I have also included the Alpharev recovery but I am not having great sucess with this and am worried about bricking.
When I flash a new ROM I clear the directories as usual and on one accasion Leedroid was flashed and once complete the only thing I could do was take the battery out, whilst on the old CWM it allowed me to reboot from the menu. Second time I tried to install insert coin and it simply said starting to flash and then nothing happened so after 5 minutes I took out the battery. Tried to flash ccwm 3.0.0.5 but CID is not recognised (Done via PB99zip or whatever the extension is). My question is can i flash roms by fake flashing cwm and then install the roms or will this brick the phone.
Any help from you chaps would be great, am I using Alphrev recovery incorrecty?
Thanks in advance
Here's an idea:
Since you went S-off, maybe you have changed your HBOOT aswell?
And are now trying to flash ROMs for the wrong HBOOT?
Also you could just flash another recovery, since you 're S-off now, it's easy, just one fastboot command needed. Look around on the forums for that.
Grtz

[Q] Cannot access Clockwork on S-off Desire PVT4

Hello,
I'm a real newbie and decided to root my Desire PVT4. The problem is that after that I decided to go back to the stock ROM and here's what happened:
1. In the beginning I rooted it with unrEVOked.
2. Then I used alpharev 1.8 to turn S-off
3. Then I played with various ROMs after I backed up my stock ROM from ROM Manager (don't know if that's called Nandroid backup).
4. But this morning I flashed a different HBOOT (first one for Oxygen, then one for Cyanogen) to the phone and from then on didn't manage to restore the stock ROM at all, I tried using PB99IMG_stock from alpharev's website but that didn't work. The phone was still working.
5. So I decided to flash what I think it's called RUU which I downloaded separately. It loaded in HBOOT and said it cannot change bootloader (probably because I've left it S-OFF) but itand then finalized it's thing.
6. Now when I turn it on normally it loads the white HTC screen and then gives me a phone with a red triangle sign in it.
7. When I turn it on with the power key + volume down key it loads HBOOT but I cannot access Recovery to flash another ROM.
Can you tell me if there's a way I can flash a recovery tool? And if yes - is there a way to turn S-ON back on that phone in order to install a stock ROM?
Thanks
I had the same problem a while back. And I am still a noob.. but this is how I fixed it... I ran an ruu just like u did to fix a bad partition. When u do that it overwrites ur recovery partition an u loose root and clockworkmod. So now u should just be able to run unrevoked again an see if that fixes it!
Let me know if it helps!
Thank you, but does unrEVOked work when there's no access to the Android itself?
EDIT: I managed to make it run - just flashed the stock HBOOT from alpharev and then reinstalled the RUU from the HBOOT. But why is it running now, the phone is S-OFF and it now DOESN'T have root? Is there a way to remove S-OFF or it's not worth bothering?
Hmm.. I would have thought unrevoking it would have turned it to s-on.. but thats beyond me. I think if you google "Unrevoked Forever" they have something called s-on that turns it back on. but i dont think they have it for desire.. But you have to have root access and Clockworkmod i believe.
I have it running now, but like you said - couldn't find a way to turn it S-ON with Unrevoked Forever.
Clockworkmod recocvery does not work on pvt4 desires. You have to flash amonra recovery. You are s-off, so you can do it via fastboot.
Lol just a heads up. Unrevoked forever doesn't work for gsm.
Swyped...
Clockwork DOES work with PVT4 phones. I have one and, so I know. I used it to flash yesterday (if someone wants to do a guide on how to get Amon-RA, then I'm all for that, please post it)
Download ROM Manager, if you can get into your phone and you can boot to CWM from there.
When I used AlphaRev 1.8 to S-OFF it installed Clockwork for me.
However, there's a thread here that guides you through S-OFF'ing, and there's a bit at the bottom of the first post about losing recovery and how to get it back.
How to flash your recovery using ClockWork's image :
Download Clockworkmod 2.5.0.7 recovery image from official AlphaRev thread for bravo.
Move the file into "C:\android-sdk-windows\tools" (default sdk android folder's installation).
Verify MD5 checksum of the image with a freeware like HashCalc or something (IMPORTANT !).
Go to the main menu of your AlphaRev HBOOT (turn on your device with return button pressed).
Go to "FASTBOOT" mode.
Go to your computer and open a new terminal (Administrator privileges required if Windows Vista or 7).
Enter exactly this (without ") : "fastboot flash recovery recovery-clockwork-2.5.0.7-bravo.img".
Now you will have a ClockWork Recovery image installed and working
Note 2 : If your device freeze on boot logo, apply your Nandroid backup that your did before S-OFF.. that should do the trick.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you are still s-on cause the new alpharev hboots are made this way (so the ruu doesnt overwrtie them)
if you want to S-ON download bravo_downgrade from alpharev.nl, flash it using fastboot or PB99IMG method and then run a RUU
if you want to go-on with custom roms just flash new recovery image with fastboot and then a custom rom, you dont even need to root your current rom
Thank you all, your advices really helped me. Thanks!

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