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Help Dodgy Desire Stuck After Hard Reset

J

Jezston

Member
Had a search around but could only find info on the Desire HD, which didn't seem relevant.

My mother has an HTC Desire which has been increasingly mischeavous since a failed software update a few months back. When it gets below half battery, if she turns it off it won't start up again - it gets stuck on the HTC logo. To get around this, she found she had to take the battery out and back in again, plug it in to charge for a while then it would boot normally.

I decided to do a full reset on the phone following HTC's instructions ... but after doing the rest it just gets stuck on the HTC screen. I can get back into the bootloader screen, but cannot boot the phone!

From looking around, it sounds like I may have a corrupted ROM, but I can't seem to find info on how to deal with that - if indeed this is the problem.

I should add the phone is an o2 branded HTC Desire which I debranded some months before handing it over to my mum. It has been fine until some months ago, which I assume would have been around the time of the 2.3 update?
 
Ok .. managed to get it to boot by charging it for a bit, and it had reset.

Now I've tried to update the firmware, it downloaded 2.29, but when it reset it got stuck on a red triangle with exclamation mark.

Looked up advice and was told to hit vol up and power, and it took me into a menu. One of the options was to 'install firmware update from memory card' (or similar), I selected this, and it said something along the lines of 'no vaid update found on e:\sdcard\update.zip'. I selected reset.

My phone is now constantly rebooting over and over. Sometimes it gets to the enter sim card pin screen, I go through that, the main screen appears for a second and it immediately resets.

What IS going on?
 
If it is a dodgy ROM on an unrooted phone, then the fix is a ROM Update Utility - the same thing you used to debrand it.

The 2.3 update only came out last week, and then only as an RUU (no OTA update), so I don't think it can be that. I do sort of remember hearing that the last OTA update didn't work on debranded phones though, even with a goldcard (and unless you left a goldcard in the phone it certainly wouldn't work).
 
That red triangle thing was the HTC recovery program.

The simplest solution is probably an RUU from shipped-ROMs, with goldcard (same as when debranding). The alternative would be to download the 2.3 upgrade, since that doesn't need a goldcard, but I'd be inclined to try the 2.29 Froyo one, since (a) that will be what your mum is used to, and (b) you can always install GB later, but there's no going back from it.

The drawback is that this will wipe the phone, but unless you can get it to boot there's no way of doing a backup first.
 
Gotta go now, but you could just try pulling out the battery, leaving it a minute, putting it back in and seeing whether it will boot properly. Long shot, but you never know.

Or if you can get back into recovery, if it has any options for just clearing the cache (clearing stuff short of a full factory reset) that might be worth a go. The RUU should work as a last resort, the question is whether there's a way of getting it going without a full wipe.
 
ust bumping this as I'm at my mums house this weekend, and am having another go at fixing it.

After some testing, here's what seems to happen:

- The phone will be working.
- Sometimes, it will suddenly reboot, and get stuck on the blank HTC screen.
- The only way to get it back up and running, is to take the battery out, plug it back in to charge for a few minutes, then turn it on again, and it will ok ... for a time.

- The phone was rooted about 9 months ago, and stock HTC desire firmware installed over the O2-branded firmware that came with it. It has been fine since UNTIL a prompt came up for what I believe was a 2.29 firmware update, an update which failed, and this behaviour started.

- Booting into the bootloader and running recovery doesn't seem to help. It'll get stuck during a reboot at some point, and I'll have to do the turnoff/charge trick as listed above. Once it's back up, it will have been returned to default android 2.1, but the above problems still persist.

After searching about, I discovered this:
[HOWTO] Downgrade Froyo (2.2) to Stock 2.1 (ANY HBOOT | WIN/LINUX/MAC | ROOT) - xda-developers
A guide to completely restore the HTC Desire to an early version of the phone, which is recommended if something like this has gone wrong.

Once it's done it's thing in USB debug mode, I get into the bootloader and it starts doing stuff.

I get a couple of error messages early on
Loading ...[PB99DIAG.zip]
No Image!
Loading ...[PBsomething else.zip]
No Image!

Then it finds something else and starts doing stuff for a little while, then comes up with a prompt asking me if I wish to start update.

It then starts going through updating stuff, still in the bootloader mode or whatever you call it, where you have the three skateboarding androids at the bottom - not into anything resembling the main OS yet.

Then it switches off and does seven little vibrates. It won't switch back on unless i do the old charge trick as listed early in this post. When I get it to turn on again, it automatically tries to start this update again, and i'm back to square one.

I'm considering just sending the phone back to HTC, and if necessary hold my hands up and tell them what I've done, and pay a fee - hopefully they won't just say no you've buggered it up buy a new phone!

Anyone got any other ideas?

I also tried reflashing with Unrevoked, but at some point early on in it's process, it reboots the phone ... and I'm stuck again.
 
Ok - it appears that downgrade did actually downgrade the phone to stock 2.1 - after leaving the battery out, then charging for a bit, the phone booted into 2.1.

I'm guessing perhaps this rebooting / not-booting issue is perhaps entirely separate to anything to do with firmware. Maybe?

I'm going to see if I can stick a stock O2 firmware on it, so it's back to how it was before I debranded it, then send it to HTC to look at. I'm thinking perhaps the problem is hardware related and nothing to do with my tinkering about.
 
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