Root Messed up recovery - please help

[molexus]

BRAVO PVT4 SHIP S-ON
HBOOT-0.93.0001
MICROP-051d
TOUCH PANEL-SYNW0101
RADIO-5.11.05.27

Hello everybody.

I'm very new to the rooting business so as i was reading up on the FAQs and GUIDEs i was playing around in the bootloader. By mistake i selected the RECOVERY option and was greeted by a black screen, an image of a phone and a red triangle on it.

I left the phone alone like that for hours and nothing changed. I told myself that whatever it was doing, it couldn't take that long, so after i tried to restart the phone using every possible button combination i ended up pulling the battery.

Luckily my phone started normally (i was afraid of the worst).

So i tried to continue with the rooting process however i'm stuck at the first part, where i have to flash the recovery. My PC will not recognize the HTC Drivers so i don't have any hboot drivers to upgrade.

In hboot, even after i connect the usb cable there's no change to the "status" (no idea what to call it) - "HBOOT" never changes to "HBOOT USB".

I am following this guide, which, at step 2 sends me to this one in order to install the hboot drivers.

I also tried to mount sd card on pc (through usb cable) - failed.
Even tried to run HTC Sync - failed. will not recognize any device

As soon as i plug in the phone to the PC the device driver installation fails.

How can i proceed in this case?

Edit: I also tried the adb shell:
C:\>adb shell
error: device not found
--guess it makes sense, since recovery is fuxed ...

 

[Hadron]

Hi molexus, and welcome to AF

Actually there's nothing wrong with your recovery - that's what the stock HTC recovery on the Desire looks like. You need to press some combination of buttons to bring up the recovery menu, which won't let you do much anyway with the stock recovery. So no, you don't have any problem with your handset.

So the problem is probably at the Windows end rather than the phone. Unfortunately that's my weak point - I don't use Windows for any of this stuff. So just to check a few things:

1) can the phone see the SD card? If it can't there may be a problem with the phone (what's called a "usb brick"). If it can, the problem almost certainly is at the PC end.

2) Have you tried different USB ports? I'd also ask whether you know the cable you are using works for data (have you ever been able to run HTC Sync or mount the SD card using it)? Whatever you do, don't plug the cable into a USB hub - directly into the PC, and even then try different sockets if the first one doesn't work.

3) When you say your PC won't recognise the HTC drivers, what exactly do you mean?

4) If you connect the phone to the PC when running Android, does anything happen on the phone (e.g. asks you whether you want to mount the SD card)? That would tell us that the phone at least recognises it's connected to USB.

5) Have you enabled USB debugging on the phone (will be in the development options menu)? You'll need that for ADB to recognise the device, even if everything else is set up correctly.

Sorry for all of the questions, just trying to narrow things down a bit.

 

[molexus]

Hello Hadron!

Thank you for your warm welcome and quick reply. I don't mind the number of questions. I'm actually glad you ask so many, it's THE sign for me that there's still hope )

So getting down to it:
1) The Phone can see the SD Card. I have Total Commander installed and i can browse all SD Card content (well the ones i have access to). I fail to see what a usb brik has to do with reading the content of the sd card though. I imagine, a usb brik is when the phone can't form a proper connection with the pc anymore due to some initialization error.

As mentioned above, not even in the bootloader (from pwr off, volume down + pwr on) i get a hint that the USB is connected. (switch from "HBOOT" to "HBOOT USB")

2) Yes, i tried diffferent usb ports. Even tried different usb cables.

3) I get the standard "USB Device not Recognized" popup message from windows.

4) Yes, on the phone everything acts normal, asks me about all those connection methods and all. I tried all of them but only "Change Only" has functionality

5) Yes

Please don't hesitate to ask me even more questions if any pop into your mind. I don't mind answering all of them as long as we narrow down the issue.

 

[Hadron]

Hello Hadron!

Thank you for your warm welcome and quick reply. I don't mind the number of questions. I'm actually glad you ask so many, it's THE sign for me that there's still hope )

So getting down to it:
1) The Phone can see the SD Card. I have Total Commander installed and i can browse all SD Card content (well the ones i have access to). I fail to see what a usb brik has to do with reading the content of the sd card though. I imagine, a usb brik is when the phone can't form a proper connection with the pc anymore due to some initialization error.

One of the symptoms of a USB brick is that the phone can't see the card. Maybe the card reader is on the USB bus? So if the phone can see the card, we can discount that one.

As mentioned above, not even in the bootloader (from pwr off, volume down + pwr on) i get a hint that the USB is connected. (switch from "HBOOT" to "HBOOT USB")

This is the one which bothers me.

I'm not sure I have a computer that's never had any android-related software on it to do a clean test with, but I just pulled my Desire out of the retirement drawer, booted into the bootloader, and connected to a PC which has had HTC Sync Manager on it but I'm pretty sure no hboot drivers (unless that product installs them). And it instantly switched to saying "HBOOT USB PLUG".

2) Yes, i tried diffferent usb ports. Even tried different usb cables.

3) I get the standard "USB Device not Recognized" popup message from windows.

So Windows sees that there's a device there, even if it can't set it up. That's something.

4) Yes, on the phone everything acts normal, asks me about all those connection methods and all. I tried all of them but only "Change Only" has functionality

The fact that it asks implies to me that the phone recognises that it's been connected over USB - it doesn't give those options if you just connect to a charger, after all. But if so why doesn't it respond when in HBOOT mode? Maybe, just maybe, that requires a driver and I do have one installed, but I don't think so.

But then you shouldn't need any special drivers for USB mass storage (though I'm always amazed at Windows' capacity to faff around setting up a generic USB stick, so who knows?).

Have you ever previously been able to mount the SD card, or run HTC Sync? Just wondering what we know has changed?

Or do you think I'm misreading it when I say that it does seem to be recognising the USB connection when running Android?

People often talk about uninstalling HTC Sync, but I think that's to stop the app interfering with other stuff you might want to do (and they ask you to keep the drivers installed). So that doesn't sound like your problem.

 

[molexus]

I don't know tbh. It's recognizing something, that's for sure, but i'm not sure what.

I have used this usb cable for data transfer, so the cable is fine. I have never used it for other than usb changing with the phone though.

Right now i'm trying this guide here: http://androidforums.com/desire-tips-tricks/365476-guide-usb-brick-fix.html

But i have two issues, three actually:
1. how the hell does he run fastboot commands if he's usb bricked?
2. does visionary really work? it's giving me a black screen after the nice "rooting device, please wait" message
3. i don't have root explorer

 

[Brian706]

I just kind of skimmed through this, but I have something simple to verify. Are you actually putting the phone into fastboot mode? Or just booting into the main bootloader screen?

If you select fastboot from the bootloader screen that's where you should see it change from fastboot to fastboot usb.

You may be doing this already, but because you were saying hboot/hboot usb I figured I'd just make sure!

 

[molexus]

Hi Brian,

well i wasn't sure i tried both ways (didn't even realize that there's a difference) but i just rebooted the phone and tried. In fastboot mode, after plugging in the usb cable, the "FASTBOOT" text remains unchanged

 

[Hadron]

You don't have a USB brick. Really, if you can see the SD card from the phone, you don't have one.

 

[Brian706]

Hmm, are you using windows 8 or usb 3.0?

Possible interfering software such as HTC sync, iTunes?

You're sure you have the proper drivers installed? Can you use the phone in mass storage mode while connected to the pc?

 

[molexus]

@Hadron: alright, no usb brick. this is, then, some other form of brick can we figure it out?

I wanna try a factory reset but i'm afraid of loosing all my contact data. Any hints how i could save them?

@Brian: Windows 7 x64, usb2.0
No HTC Sync or iTunes installed. It's a clean machine. i never used this pc for anything but usb charging.

No, i cann't use USB Mass Storage. But it used to work 100%. I remember copying some movie files on the card in the past.

 

[Brian706]

It sounds to me like you don't have the HTC drivers installed possibly. I think you should install HTC sync (which will install drivers) and then test it. If necessary uninstall HTC sync but do not uninstall the drivers. They should show up as two separate items in the uninstall programs section.

 

[molexus]

as i wrote in my initial post, i already tried that. I even tried to sync with htc sync but it wouldn't recognize my device. and as i said earlier, right now not even mass storage works. so idk where the problem is, but there's deff a problem somewhere.

 

[Hadron]

There are several ways of backing up contacts. If they are stored as google contacts then they're already backed up unless you keep syncing off. Otherwise the simplest is to go into the contacts app and select "export", which will back them up as a vcard file to your SD card.

However, there is only one circumstance in which a factory reset will help: if you have some user-installed app or data that's causing a conflict. It will not make any difference at all to how it behaves in hboot or fastboot mode, since in that mode Android is not running, and none of your apps or data are loaded.

All a factory reset does is wipe user-installed apps and user data - "factory data reset" is a better name. Keep it up your sleeve as a last resort, but I'll be very surprised if it helps.

 

[Brian706]

D'oh! I thought I had read that but didn't see it when I looked back.

We seem to have eliminated most things... Have you restarted the pc since installing the drivers? Sometimes windows gets sketchy with new devices. It's worth a shot anyway.

As hadron added I don't think a factory reset will help you in this situation either.

I will also pm scotty85 to come take a look. I was going to copy/paste his huge list of connection issues but can't find it for some reason

He'll probably have at least one or two fresh ideas up his sleeve

 

[molexus]

@Hadron: ty for the contacts export tip. i'm feeling safer now, whatever will happen
Have not tried factory reset yet.

@Brian:
i uninstalled whatever htc product / driver i had installed on my pc. i rebooted.
i installed "HTCDriver_4.1.0.001_20130315.exe". i rebooted - didn't work
i installed "HTC BMP USB Driver x64.exe". i rebooted - didn;t work
i uninstalled the previous two.
i installed "htc_sync_setup_3.3.21.exe" (from which the above two were extracted). i rebooted - didn't work.

honestly - if the solution would have been so stupid, as in, just a reboot, i would have slapped myself really hard for not trying it earlier )

I hope your friend scotty can come up with something :-S

Many thanks for all the good ideas so far guys, you've been great.

Please don't give up yet ^_^

 

[scotty85]

I will also pm scotty85 to come take a look. I was going to copy/paste his huge list of connection issues but can't find it for some reason

He'll probably have at least one or two fresh ideas up his sleeve

hadron is the desire expert. i know general things about all htcs,but he knows some very in-depth stuff about that model,so youre in good hands with him here.

sounds to me like a driver issue,but dont rule out something running on the pc,or even a bad cable. plugging the phone into a windows PC without any working drivers is pretty much just like plugging into the charger,wich does not invoke the hboot/fastboot "usb" change.

my droid eris does not change to hboot usb when plugged in to the PC,even with working fastboot drivers. with mtd devices,you may need to install special hboot drivers.

so the fact that hboot does not change to "hboot usb" is not of concern to me,we will concentrate on making the phone recognized in adb,and fastboot modes.

here is the checklist brian spoke of:

troubleshooting connectivity issues:
*make sure you have changed to your adb/fastboot directory!
-try a reboot of the PC
-try different usb cables and ports
-dont use a usb hub
-dont use usb 3.0
-make sure nothing capable of comunicating with the phone is enabled and running. htc sync,pdanet,easy tether,and even itunes have all been known to cause issues.
-windows 8 has been known to have issues. try a windows 7 or older machine

failing the above,
-i use these drivers for fastboot and adb(donwload and run as admin): http://downloads.unrevoked.com/HTCDriver3.0.0.007.exe (mirror)

failing that,try manually updating the drivers in the following manner:
-put the phone in fastboot mode(select fastboot from the hboot menu)
-open device manager on the PC
-plug in phone,watch for it to pop up in device manager.
-update drivers with device manager,pointing the wizard to the extracted
driver download folder from above

note that you can check the connectivity of the phone,and make sure drivers are working by in the following manner:
-open cmd window. change to directory containing adb/fastboot utilities

-adb with the phone in the booted OS,usb debug enabled,enter:
adb devices in a cmd window

-fastboot with phone in fastboot,enter:
fastboot devices in cmd window

in either case,a properly connected phone with working drivers installed should report back the phones serial number.

 

[molexus]

Hello all,

i tried to connect the phone at work today with a different usb cable and it worked! So i guess it's either my w7 at home, or the drivers, or the cable ... fact is: it has nothing to do with the phone. More digging on that shall be made on my side

Right now, however, i'm having a different issue.

As i moved on with the rooting GUIDE i got around running revolutionary. This one gets stuck at "Waiting for fastboot...". My phone restarts in fastboot and gets that progress bar in the top right corner, however, it never moves.

I can confirm that i have the hboot drivers installed correctly since, while in fastboot, i can successfully run "fastboot devices" in a cmd and it returns my device serial number.

What now?