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Root True brick..?

Flumme

Android Enthusiast
Jun 29, 2011
335
89
Sweden
I have a serious problem with my phone! However, first things first: I'm on Desire GSM, Oxygen 2.2.2 on AlphaRev Oxygen r2, no EXT partition, no branding, PVT 1

having had reboot problems before with my phone (http://androidforums.com/desire-sup...hone-still-hardware-software.html#post2930054) I wasn't too concerned when I discovered another complete freeze an hour ago. It was a little new, since the phone displayed the unlock SIM card screen. I just figured it had accidently rebooted in my pocket somehow, and now frozen. Did a battery pull as per usual, but when I tried to turn the phone on, nothing happened. Nothing!!! Hboot or fastboot didn't do anything either.

I discovered that attaching it to the power cable turns the little LED light on, but otherwise nothing. Every time I tried booting the LED turned out, and nothing else happened. Couldn't get the LED to light up again without a battery pull.

Left it charging for no apparent reason while searching for info online, and when the LED turned green tried to reboot the phone yet again. Now it vibrated, and turned the screen on to the joker of AlphaRev:). And froze.:mad: Another battery pull, recharging for a while, and tried Hboot (Vol down + power). Lo and behold:D, this greeted me:


AlphaRev Oxygen r2
BRAVO UNKNOWN SHIP S-OFF
H-BOOT-6.93.1002
MICROP-031d
TOUCH PANEL-SYNT0101
RADIO-5.11.05.27
Aug 10 2010.17:52:18

HBOOT
<VOL UP> to previous item
<VOL DOWN> to next item
<POWER> to select item

BOOTLOADER
REBOOT
REBOOT BOOTLOADER
POWER DOWN

I'm still not touching anything, trying to read up on what my next step should be. Since the above screen didn't make sense to me I started toggling VOL up/down when the usual HBoot menu appeared, including Recovery :D, pressed recovery, and for a couple of seconds the screen went white (the process of turning white took literally a couple of seconds, like pulling down a white shade over the screen), and then the fastboot menu appeared as described above, only instead of HBOOT it says FASTBOOT :thinking::thinking: I plugged it in the the computer, in an USB port that has always worked before, and now the phone says FASTBOOT USB.

My questions now are:

1. is this a true brick, or can I somehow salvage my precious phone?
2. Should I try to push (AmonRa 2.0.1) recovery via fastboot, as I don't seem to have any recovery at the moment?
3. Should I then try to push Stock Hboot via fastboot, followed by the Stock RUU? In order to try and get the phone back to the shop for repairs...
 
It should not be a complete brick, as i have managed to reach some form of Hboot and Fastboot, right?

I've been thinking, is there a possibility that it could be down to the battery? Since whatever success I've had, happened while the battery was fully charged, or is this probably just a coincidence?

I'm trying to boot to the point where i can wipe the battery stats, and see what happens.

What bothers me is that I can't keep the phone from freezing or collapsing into complete brickness, even if I keep the power cord connected and the LED green. Mystifying...
 
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I've made a little progress.

I managed to flash AlphaRev's Stock hboot partition table via Android Flasher in Fastboot mode. Letting the phone lie with no battery for half an hour seems to get me a tiny window of limited functionality when i reconnect it with the powercord.

As this is a tiny window, when I later tried to flash AmonRa the phone froze on me midflash. and after 90 minutes of agonized waiting and no activity I pulled the cord and the battery. Android Flasher claimed the flash was a success, and I now have access to recovery. I am however unable to do anything: I got as fas as the menu in recovery, but the phone froze before I reached the option to wipe...

I've been thinking of trying to flash the RUU as a PB99IMG.zip on the SD-card, but don't want the phone to freeze midflash. That would brick it for sure, right?

It's not possible to run the RUU .exe from the computer with the phone in fastboot mode, right? As I understand it, you can only flash .img un fastboot...? Can I run the RUU .exe with the phone in Hboot?

Please, could somebody help me?
 
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You can run the RUU from the computer in fastboot mode. However, the RUU is a program that checks the phone id and (if the check is passed) flashes a set of images over fastboot. Since it will try to flash the entire phone, it will take a lot longer than flashing just hboot or recovery, so if the window is too small to reliably do those I don't fancy your changes of running the whole RUU. And as you say, if it freezes while flashing the radio that's a brick.

Thinking about your second post, are you able to get another battery (e.g. know someone else with a Desire you could borrow one from for a few minutes)? Just on the off chance that your battery is bad, if the phone were stable with a different battery you'd be able to fix everything else (starting with reflashing recovery again by the sound of it - or maybe not, if that was just a random freeze?).

Since you still have an alpharev hboot you can wipe your system: fastboot erase <partition>, where <partition> is cache, data or system (ROM). Personally I suspect that the reason your phone is unstable is hardware, but as you've changed the memory table your data are fouled-up anyway, so you lose nothing by wiping. But the current contents of these partitions shouldn't be relevant while the phone is in hboot, so if it's not stable in that state I don't think these are the answer.

Otherwise, all I can think of is to get the phone into a state where it's not obvious it's been modified, then return it for repair. The phone won't boot right now, but the custom hboot and recovery are a give-away. You could try to extract the stock recovery.img and hboot from the RUU and see whether you can flash them, then return the phone for repair. HBOOT is risky in itself though - if the phone freezes while that is flashing you are finished (though maybe HTC can still do something). And do note that everything I've written here is guesswork - I've never attempted to actually do any of this!

The one other suggestion I have is to try posting in the root forum, as that's where you're most likely to find advanced help.
 
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Thank you Hadron!

I have a feeling it's hardware too, so my basic goal here is to, as you say, get it to as close to stock appearance as I can. I don't really know anybody with a Desire, so if push comes to shove i'm gonna have to buy a new battery to try and see if it works. Something i'm not too keen on doing, considering that this might not be the issue at all.

How do i go about extracting the hboot and the flash image from the RUU? I tried extracting my RUU .zip but get a failure message that says that it's invalid..? The same happens when I just try to open the folder...

I'll see if a Moderator is able to move this thread to the rooted forum, as I'm opening a new thread there now...
 
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Here in the UK I don't think Desire batteries are very expensive, so I'd be tempted to try it, since if it works that's problem solved.

As for the RUU, I was hoping that if you unzipped the PB99IMG.zip on a computer you'd find something useful in it (i.e. that it would contain separate images). Unfortunately I don't have one with me to check this.

If something like this does work, remember to replace hboot last, since you will lose S-Off when that goes (which you know, but with a lot of things to think about I know I might forget something like that).

Good luck
 
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i dont think its a battery problem. you said you suffered random reboots before.
were these when the device was under load?

this is likely going to be a motherboard cpu hardware problem. you need to attempt to get this to stock if you can by flashing and ruu so you can send it to htc for warranty repair.
If you have some freezer packs put the pack in a plastic bag (so there is no condensation touching the phone) take the back off the phone so the battery and cpu can be cooled by the feezer pack and see if you can flash an RUU.
that version of hboot you will need to flash the alpharev downgrader first so hboot can return to stock
 
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i dont think its a battery problem. you said you suffered random reboots before.
were these when the device was under load?

I have suffered random reboots before, and had my motherboard exchanged due to the over heating problem. Since then it's mostly been random freezes
http://androidforums.com/desire-sup...hone-still-hardware-software.html#post2930054


this is likely going to be a motherboard cpu hardware problem. you need to attempt to get this to stock if you can by flashing and ruu so you can send it to htc for warranty repair.
If you have some freezer packs put the pack in a plastic bag (so there is no condensation touching the phone) take the back off the phone so the battery and cpu can be cooled by the feezer pack and see if you can flash an RUU.
that version of hboot you will need to flash the alpharev downgrader first so hboot can return to stock

Thank you for that advice, I'll follow it tonight, when the kids are asleep.
 
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Damnation!!!

I have had no luck whatsoever...

Put the phone on a freezerpack, taking care not to get condensation on the phone, booted to fastboot and flashed the Hboot downgrade. Succeeded, I think.

Fastboot now says:

AlphaRev Unlock
BRAVO PVT1 SHIP S-OFF
HBOOT-6.93.9999
MICROP-031d
TOUCH PANEL-SYNT0101
RADIO-5.11.05.27
Aug 10 2010.17:52:18

FASTBOOT

<VOL UP> to previous item
<VOL DOWN> to next item
<POWER> to select item

BOOTLOADER
REBOOT
REBOOT BOOTLOADER
POWER DOWN

So, after half an hour or so, I got down to business with the RUU. Got through the first stages of accepting risk, accepting upgrades and so forth. However at the first reboot, the program wanted to reboot into bootloader, and the phone did not want to play ball anymore. it froze and didn't reboot at all, resulting in a shutdown of the program with the message "Error 171" and the adamant insistence that I had to make sure the phone was connected via USB all the time.

I have once (after this) reached recovery and wiped everything, not because I thought it would heal the phone magically, but because I could. Right when I was done wiping and wanted to return to the recovery main menu, the phone froze again.

When I try to reconnect the phone in fastboot, the computer doesn't recognize it...
 
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At the moment, i have a very hard time geeting in to the phone at all. Basically I'll try to fastboot flash the stock flash1 image, as the alpharev joker is a dead giveaway. I have also tried to extract the Hboot from the RUU in order to fastbootflash it, but i am unable to unzip it. i get a message that the .zips (from shipped ROMs as well as from the ultimate dropbox of root stuff here on the forum) are invalid in some way.

How do i extract the Hboot that I need to S-off and restore my phone to apparent stock?
 
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At the moment, i have a very hard time geeting in to the phone at all. Basically I'll try to fastboot flash the stock flash1 image, as the alpharev joker is a dead giveaway. I have also tried to extract the Hboot from the RUU in order to fastbootflash it, but i am unable to unzip it. i get a message that the .zips (from shipped ROMs as well as from the ultimate dropbox of root stuff here on the forum) are invalid in some way.

How do i extract the Hboot that I need to S-off and restore my phone to apparent stock?
rather than do that as its a bad way of returning stuff
get the pb99img.zip from the ultimate dropbox (there is a password read the last page of the thread)
rename it to PB99IMG.zip
use a card reader to put it on sdcard
place it back into the device and boot to bootloader
follow the prompt on phone to flash it
make sure your phone is cold the entire time.

the reason i mention condensation is not to trigger the moisture traps/markers on the phone battery and motherboard
 
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I agree that it is a very bad way of returning stuff! I don't seem to have a choice, though...

I have got the PB99IMG.zip, and I'll try that as a last resort. The thing is that my phone doesn't seem to handle reboots all that well. Yesterday, as I tried to flash the RUU (with the phone on freezeerpack well protected), it froze at the first reboot into bootloader.

Do you know in which order the PB99IMG.zip flashes stuff? The original Hboot ought to be last, preceeded by the radio, I imagine. I am very afraid of a radiobrick. That is why I want to flash as much manually one thing at a time as possible.

What do you think of my reasoning? Am I way off...?
 
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I agree that it is a very bad way of returning stuff! I don't seem to have a choice, though...

I have got the PB99IMG.zip, and I'll try that as a last resort. The thing is that my phone doesn't seem to handle reboots all that well. Yesterday, as I tried to flash the RUU (with the phone on freezeerpack well protected), it froze at the first reboot into bootloader.

Do you know in which order the PB99IMG.zip flashes stuff? The original Hboot ought to be last, preceeded by the radio, I imagine. I am very afraid of a radiobrick. That is why I want to flash as much manually one thing at a time as possible.

What do you think of my reasoning? Am I way off...?
i cant remember the order, i think its radio 1st followed by hboot. even if you flashed radio 1st it would still do all of these again via pbimg
as far as i remember it only reboots after the rom has been flashed when doing the pbimg method.
if it completely craps out then you should be able to return it as it will have partially flashed the default files and should look "normal"
what i would state is that im going by the assumption you are unbranded.
if you are not or are "debranded" (different to unbranded as you need a goldcard) then you will need to flash the pb99img.zip or RUU for your carrier.

you can get the pb99img.zip from your carriers RUU by running the RUU without device connected. while its open and doing nothing, navigate to you temp folder (somewhere in your user/username/appdata/ folder) and find rom.zip. you will be able to copy that and rename it to PB99IMG.zip
 
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I am one happy camper!!!

Managed to run the PB99IMG.zip finally. Had to switch to another microSD, but then it worked like a charm :)
It was a nervewracking wait, I can tell you that! But it all ended well, and the phone even booted all the way back.

Now it's dead as a doornail again, but at least it has the right OS on board. I will drop it off for repairs asap!

Thank you, Hadron and Rastaman-FB!
 
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I am one happy camper!!!

Managed to run the PB99IMG.zip finally. Had to switch to another microSD, but then it worked like a charm :)
It was a nervewracking wait, I can tell you that! But it all ended well, and the phone even booted all the way back.

Now it's dead as a doornail again, but at least it has the right OS on board. I will drop it off for repairs asap!

Thank you, Hadron and Rastaman-FB!

good news, its a blatent overheat mobo problem. good job you had some freezer packs, not everyone owns them.
 
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For future reference, and others with similar problems:

I wrapped the freezerpack in a kitchen towel, wrapped the phone in a plastic bag and put it on the freezer pack. Wrapped the whole thing in a thicker towel. I had to put my hand into the plastic bag to operate the phone, but I think this was the best way to prevent water from condensation to reach the phone.

That's my two cents...
 
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For future reference, and others with similar problems:

I wrapped the freezerpack in a kitchen towel, wrapped the phone in a plastic bag and put it on the freezer pack. Wrapped the whole thing in a thicker towel. I had to put my hand into the plastic bag to operate the phone, but I think this was the best way to prevent water from condensation to reach the phone.

That's my two cents...
thats proper surgery lol. like keyhole for htc or something

glad it payed off though
 
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