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How do I flash a ROM onto my phone?

You download the rom you want and any updates or kernels for it. After download, move these files to your phones sd card via usb, make sure they are on the root directory of the sd card (not inside any folders). Make sure you have backed up any info you don't want to lose as this will wipe the phone. After all this, you power off your phone, once the power is off you have to boot to recovery by holding the home key and the power key. Once you are in recovery, you scroll down to wipe and then pick both wipe data and wipe dalvik cache. If you are on the stock recovery image, you will get an error saying to wipe dalvik via adb but don't worry, it still works, this is just a visual glitch. Once you have wiped these both, press the back button to get back to the main menu and select flash zip from SD card. From this menu scroll down and select the rom file to start the flash, usually about 5 minutes, after its all done select reboot now. This first boot can take anywhere from 3 minutes to like 15 minutes so just be patient. I'd suggest after you have it booted up, power it back off and go back to recovery and re-wipe data just for good measure, this helps fight off any bugs there might be. Good luck to you, post back your results.
 
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Okay so this is what happened.
1) I didn't see KitsapAndroid's post so I didn't do "flash zip from sd card." Yet.
2) It started up in the factory reset version and turned the power off
3) I booted to recovery again and did everything over, BUT I did the step KitsapAndroid said to do
4) After doing those steps, when I rebooted, it got to the white screen with HTC in green. Then the screen became black. Then it made a "whoooooosh!" sound and it repeated a video of the android mascot dancing around. :/ This scared the crap out of me because I thought I brick'd my phone! So I removed the battery, booted recovery and did a nandroid restore.

So now I'm just at a nandroid restore. WAT DO!?
 
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I don't think you gave the phone enough time to boot for the first time. Re-wipe and then flash zip from sd card again. The best thing to do when your phone is booting for the first time is walk away... Sometimes it can take 10+ minutes and may even boot cycle again. Just let it do it's thing and relax.

Okay. So the dancing android is okay??? I'm gonna try it again and leave it alone for max of 25 minutes.
 
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