HTC Desire with Cyanogen Mod will no longer boot- please help!
Hi,
I installed Cyanogen Mod 7 on my HTC Desire (S-OFF) in the summer and up until now there've been no problems. Last night apps were crashing unexpectedly, so I decided to reboot, and now the phone gets stuck at the Cyanogen Mod loading screen. I imagine what I need to fix it is somewhere in the bootloader menu, but I didn't want to try anything without asking you guys first. I'd appreciate it if you could keep things fairly simple- I'm pretty good with technology, but don't know a huge amount about rooting. Thanks.
How old is the phone? In particular, if you go into the bootloader what does it say at the top? "PVT1" is what I'm wondering about, since some of those early ones develop overheating problems.
I suggest pulling the battery out and leaving the phone for a while to make sure it is thoroughly discharged and cool. Then see whether it will boot.
If not, it's guesswork what to do next, since all we know is that it's stopped booting. You could reflash the rom without a wipe - harmless if it doesn't work. Or you could try a factory reset from recovery, which will obviously be more palatable if you have a recent backup. Heck, if you have a recent nandroid you could restore that - if that doesn't get it working then the problem probably isn't software.
More radically you could flash a different ROM. If nothing works you could run an RUU and return to stock - but leave that to last (it reflashes the radio, and I'd like to be sure there's no other problem before doing that, because if that goes wrong we're in a worse state).
It's the bit about apps crashing, then the phone failing on a reboot, which makes me wonder about the overheating by the way, so do try the pull and boot when cool first.
I got the phone around July last year, so it was already a fairly old model by that point. Yes, at the top it says "PVT1".
I'll try what you suggested about leaving the battery out. I have backups, but I don't think any of them are particularly recent- I guess it wouldn't be a huge loss though, just a few apps. In fact, most of my apps are on the SD card- would that be affected by a reset?
In the meantime, could you tell me how to do the things you've mentioned/ link me to a guide? I've forgotten what any of these terms mean since I rooted it. And thanks a lot, Hadron.
I suggest reading the rooting faq, linked in the Desire All Things Root Guide sticky post in this forum. But very briefly:
To get into recovery, select it from the hboot menu. Depending on which recovery you have the menus will differ, but you will have options there to make/restore backups, wipe caches, do a factory reset or flash a ROM. The last is a matter of putting the ROM zip on your sd card and installing from recovery. If you don't have a card reader, you can mount the card over usb from recovery (look for a mounts and storage menu) and copy to it from a computer.
Not all PVT1 overheat (I have one myself), but crashes when running apps followed by a failure to boot are often symptoms of that. If so, there's a good chance the phone will boot when cool. Unfortunately if that is the problem then there's no user fix (though measures which reduce heating may help a bit, eg don't overclock, use a battery efficient kernel). You'll just have to see how it goes in that case. The real fix for overheating is a new motherboard, which is unlikely to be a cost-effective option.
Oh God, I reflashed CyanogenMod 7.2.0.1 and now when I reboot the phone gets stuck on the HTC splash screen.
Update: also tried it with 7.1- same results.
Last edited by AFairJudgement; December 13th, 2012 at 10:34 AM.
Guess that means that just leaving it to cool wasn't enough.
Did you do a factory reset before flashing the ROMs? If not it might be worth doing now, then see whether it will boot. It might be some data corruption that's stopping it.
If you don't have a recent backup, it might be worth taking a nandroid first. Now normally I'd say there is little point in taking a nandroid of a system which won't boot, but Titanium Backup Pro (the paid version) can now restore individual apps & data from a CWN backup, so it might be useful to do (note: I've not tried this, just going by the description).
I didn't factory reset, no. I'll try that. My last backup is from the summer, but honestly, data loss it this point won't bother me much. I just want a working phone! I'll take a more recent nandroid as well; I don't usually pay for apps, but it sounds like the pro version of Titanium could be useful.
Edit: A factory reset worked! Thank you very much.
Last edited by AFairJudgement; December 13th, 2012 at 03:44 PM.
HTC Desire with Cyanogen Mod will no longer boot- please help!
