Root Unable to launch new rom

[fido1357]

After biting the bullet and rooting my t-mobile HTC Desire using unrevoked3 I now have super user access. I've installed Titanium Backup and Rom Manager and downloaded a couple of ROMs to try out. I tried DeFrost 2.7 from Droid Den and CyanogenMod 6.0.0 downloaded direct through ROM manager. I backed up and tried to get the new ROMs running. Both times the phone went through the backup and boot process with everything looking fine but when it started up it wouldn't fully boot. With the CyanogenMod I just got the CyanogenMod blue circle/arrow animation cycling over and over and with DeFrost never got past the pink circle, even after leaving it for an hour. I can take out the battery and restore through nandroid no problem but obviously one of the main reasons to root is to try new roms. I was hoping someone can see what I'm missing here

 

[SUroot]

Can you boot without the SD card in?

 

[fido1357]

Yep, I've just tried and I can - into the original sense, as the ROM would be on the card so I can't access it. Is this an SD card issue?

 

[SUroot]

Sometimes after partitioning a card or setting up a new rom, I get stuck in a boot loop. I usaully find if I remove the card and the rom will then boot, it is a card issue.

can you load other roms ok (Modaco for example)?

 

[fido1357]

I have only tried the two different ones and couldn't get anywhere with either of them. The only thing that boots is the original HTC/T mobile I got with the phone. I was under the impression I don't need to do the goldcard thing with this, is that correct? The only other obvious option is to wipe everything and try to imstall a new rom from scratch, but obviously I'm pretty nervous about doing that with things not going right so far

 

[SUroot]

I'll be honest, I haven't any experience in the unrevoked method, so I'm not sure what it does. I believe you don't need a gold card for it though.

 

[fido1357]

If I go with the wipe data and cache option in ROM manager can I still recover data from previous nandroid backups if that doesn't work?

 

[SUroot]

You can but you'll still be restoring the entire ROM (including data).

if you just want to restore apps and data, use Titanium backup, use the batch mode and select Backup all apps and system data

 

[fido1357]

Thats fine, as long as I can get back to where I was then I can experiment a bit! I'm going to try installing the radio zip, then cyanogenmod with the wipe data and cache option

 

[fido1357]

Success! I guess it needed the wipe data and cache option to work

 

[SUroot]

Good news. How's the Rom?

 

[fido1357]

It's stable and bug free so far. I'm still messing around with it getting everything set up, but all the fun froyo stuff is there. There are lots more customisation and drill down options than with sense as you would expect. You lose 2 screens (down to 5) but I expected that (edit: you can have 7 after all if you want), pinch to zoom is still there though. I have to say everything seems a lot snappier, especially app launching and the browser. All good, but I'll have to give it a week or so to really say for sure.