First off, the amount of knowledge here is astounding. But I have scoured Phandroid, XDA, the entire internet, and several parallel earth internets with no luck in finding a solution. I think I can safely say I've done my due diligence. If any of you can give me a hand (Scotty85?!), I'd really appreciate it.

I suspect if someone could help me get the phone back to square one--completely clean--any one of the gillions of "reverting to stock ROM" guides would do the trick. Frustratingly, my knowledge of PCs doesn't translate to phones.

Phone Specs:
HTC Rezound
VIGOR PVT SHIP S-ON RL
HBOOT-2.28.0000
RADIO-2.23.10.0123r/2.23.10.0124r
OpenDSP-V14.6.0.7708.00.0507
eMCC-BOOT
Sep 20 2012,17:40:22

SDK tools: "Pulled from the SDK of February 13, 2013"


PROBLEM: Cannot revert to stock rom by

1) The only RUU exe I can find crashes on both my home and office PCs (Win7). RUU title is RUU_VIGOR_ICS_35_S_VERIZON_WWE_3.14.605.12_Radio_RS_1.22.10.0424r_3622A_MR3_9K_release_270509_signed

2) flashing from Amon Ra or TWRP (can't mount eMCC/data)
3) or uploading PH98IMG.zip to SD card and letting Hboot handle the heavy lifting (sticks at HTC boot up screen on reboot)
4) or using "fastboot oem rebootRUU" followed by "fastboot flash zip PH98IMG.zip" gets
sending 'zip' (624366 KB)...
OKAY [ 55.743s]
writing 'zip'...
(bootloader) signature checking...
FAILED (remote: 12 signature verify fail)
finished. total time: 142.046s


BACKGROUND: I'm obviously a noob, but the only way to learn is by digging in. Here's the progression that's led me to this point:

1) Learned to unlock bootloader
2) Installed cm-10.1-20130629-NIGHTLY-vigor (officially unsupported by available for Rezound from CyanogenMOD's website)
3) Noticed instability so I wiped everything (x3) and tried to revert to stock. Couldn't make any progress, especially since the RUU exe crashes on both Win7 systems I have.
4) To get functionality for work, switched to cm-10.1.0.1-vigor.
5) Still have stability issues, so I'm trying yet again to revert. Current results of attempts are listed above under "PROBLEMS"

Note1: Per Scott's suggestion on one thread, I've modified the android-info.txt in PH98IMG.zip as follows, making sure the version number is higher than the current from CID Getter:
"modelid: PH9810000
cidnum: VZW__001
mainver: 4.09.605.2
hbootpreupdate:12
DelCache:1
DelFat:1
"
Note 2: MD5s check out.

Note 3: Before my first installation of CyanogenMOD's latest nightly, adb worked fine and would list my phone. After CyanogenMOD's latest nightly, adb does succeed in starting daemon and lists what it think is my phone, but instead of listing a phone it lists a blank space and returns to the command prompt. if I try adb reboot, it returns error: device not found. BUT fastboot still works fine.

Appendix 1: fastboot getvar all returns:
C:\Users\Josh\Desktop\Root Project\sdk-tools>fastboot getvar all
(bootloader) version: 0.5
(bootloader) version-bootloader: 2.28.0000
(bootloader) version-baseband: 2.23.10.0123r/2.23.10.0124r
(bootloader) version-cpld: None
(bootloader) version-microp: None
(bootloader) version-main:
(bootloader) serialno: #########
(bootloader) imei: #######
(bootloader) product: vigor
(bootloader) platform: HBOOT-8260
(bootloader) modelid: PH9810000
(bootloader) cidnum: VZW__001
(bootloader) battery-status: good
(bootloader) battery-voltage: 3776mV
(bootloader) partition-layout: Generic
(bootloader) security: on
(bootloader) build-mode: SHIP
(bootloader) boot-mode: FASTBOOT
(bootloader) commitno-bootloader: cecc19f7
(bootloader) hbootpreupdate: 11
(bootloader) gencheckpt: 0
all: Done!
finished. total time: 0.499s

Appendix 2: The sequence I've been following trying to get the thing to accept the stock rom is below...and I've tried small variations when what's below fails miserably.

1. Load TWRP or Amon Ra recovery
2. Wipe, wipe, wipe!
3. Reboot bootloader
4. fastboot flash recovery recovery_signed.img (have treated as interchangeable in sequence with step 5)
5. fastboot flash boot boot_signed.img (have treated as interchangeable in sequence with step 4)
6. (used this, also from Scott, before I started manually editing the android-info.txt in the image zip) fastboot flash zip SetMainVersionLOW.zip (to make sure the main version is lower than the stock ROM version--otherwise it'll think you're upgrading to a lower version and won't run)
7. fastboot oem lock
8. This step varies. I've tried

a. fastboot oem rebootRUU then fastboot flash zip PH98IMG.zip
b. fastboot boot TWRP or Amon Ra recovery, then flashing PH98IMG.zip from there
c. dropping PH98IMG.zip on the SD card and letting Hboot handle the heavy lifting

 

Ok, got things solved over at XDA. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=43336634#post43336634

Needed a stock rooted rom (mjones73 directed me to one). Wiped, flashed from Amon Ra. Good as new.

 

Thanks, Scotty! It was a heck of a week trying to figure this out. Felt like when I first started learning how to tear a PC down in the 90s. Triumph, tears, and panic all rolled into one little hobby. =)

Best,
Josh