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Root Help - bad flash, and phone is unusable!

T

teleute

Newbie
I've been googling the hell out of this, but I'm exhausted and frazzled and have a non-working phone, and I just need a bit of guidance...*sigh*

I have a Telus HTC Desire. Quite a while ago I rooted it and flashed MildWild. Over time, it's slowly gotten more and more unstable - app crashes, then more frequent ones, then entire device crashes, then settings going missing...my final straw was that the Google Play app just went completely and utterly missing. Finally decided I really just needed to re-flash the damn thing.

After some research, I didn't see anyone else having these sorts of problems with MW, and most were recommending it highly. However, I saw a note I hadn't seen previously that ext4 partitions on the SD card for a2sd shouldn't be bigger than 1.5GB, as it might cause instability. So I thought hey - I'll reformat the partitions, make my ext4 the recommended size (it was too big), and just re-install my apps from scratch just in case it was weird data from my backup that was causing problems.

Used MiniTool Partition Wizard to reformat - FAT32 partition first, then ext4 of 1.5GB. Put the ROM zip on the card, and then booted into the bootloader (I put ClockworkMod on there back when I originally played around with it). When I told it to choose a zip from the sdcard, though, it's telling me "E: Can't mount /dev/block/mmcblk0 (or /dev/block/mmcblk0p1) (Invalid argument)" then "E: Can't mount /sdcard"

When I try to reboot it's just going to fastboot, and all I can do from there is reboot again, go to the bootloader again, or power down.

I've seen lots of references to RUUs and such, but then I see a lot of references to that not being the way to go (plus, I don't think I can make a goldcard in the state it's in right now).

I really have no idea what to do to have a functional phone. Can anyone please help?

Info from bootloader is:
BRAVO PVT3 SHIP S-ON
(and that really confuses me, because shouldn't it have been off to have rooted and flashed in the first place? I also can't get it turned back off - Revolutionary just tells me "waiting for device")
HBOOT-0.93.0001
MICROP-051d
TOUCH PANEL-SYNT0101
RADIO-5.17.05.23
Aug 10 2010,17:52:10

I don't care if I go to something custom or stock or what at this point - I really just need a functional device.

Thank you!
 
There are two possibilities here:

1) Your card is unreadable by the phone because of something Minitool did. To test this, redo the partitioning using GParted, which unlike Minitool is actually reliable (there are people who recommend Minitool, but these are just people who don't know anything else).

If you have another card you can test this easily by putting the other card in the phone. If the phone can read that one, you know you need to repartition this one.

2) You have a usb brick. Shame you are S-On (and if you rooted with unrevoked that's what I'd expect) because it's easier to fix when S-Off. There is a guide to fixing these linked from the Desire All Things Root Guide sticky post in this forum.

Good luck.
 
I don't have another card, but I guess I can go buy one. :-( I can also try GParted - I just specifically used the other since I saw so many recommendations for it.

As for getting to S-OFF, pretty much every suggestion I saw for that required the phone to be working in at least some capacity (i.e. debugging option has to be turned on in the booted phone or something), but I'll look through again.

Thank you.
 
The usb brick fix can be done without s-off, it's just more work. See the guide for instructions.

At best Minitool tends to leave misaligned partitions, which reduces card write speed. There's no guarantee that's the problem, but we have seen enough misbehaviour after using it that we disrecommend it. One problem with the web is that it only takes one person to suggest something and others can copy it, and it then becomes widespread.

I really don't know which is the cause. It's an odd collection of symptoms anyway, as neither of those causes should stop the phone booting (though a usb brick does usually cause other problems in addition to not being able to see the card), and you've not mentioned doing anything to the ROM itself. Have you tried a factory reset from recovery?

A second oddity is that you say it boots into fastboot. If the ROM were hopelessly corrupted I'd expect it to boot into hboot (or just hang, or bootloop). Fastboot is odd. You normally need to press the back button while booting to get that.
 
To be honest, that's why I didn't go too crazy on diagnosing the sdcard just yet - I didn't understand why it wasn't booting if it was just the sdcard. And you're correct - I didn't do anything to the ROM. I was *planning* to, which is why I was re-partitioning, but I hadn't yet. :-/ Although to be fair, I'm not sure I'm correctly assessing that it's booting to fastboot. It says fastboot at the top, though, and I don't think it's an option...it seems more like a title. And my options are bootloader, reboot, reboot bootloader, and power down.

Once I started having this problem I tried a factory reset from recovery, yes. I get the same error about not being able to mount the sdcard, and then it says "skipping format".

The whole thing is just hugely puzzling to me. I'm on the verge of getting a new phone, honestly, since I spend all day diagnosing and troubleshooting technology issues, and it's last thing I want to do with my evenings as well...
 
Yup, that's fastboot mode it's booting to.

I think it's unlikely the card is the reason it won't boot. The problem with the card is just that it would be easier to fix the rest if it could read the card! You could eliminate the card as a cause by trying to boot with it removed - if you've done a reset already it should not need the card.

Do you have the fastboot command set up on your computer (it's part of the SDK on Windows, a stand-alone program on other platforms)? If not it's probably worth doing. The adb and fastboot faq or the Revolutionary guide will say/link to how you do this for Windows. With that you can use the command from step 1 of the usb brick guide to unblock the sd (if that's the problem) and to get the cid if you need a goldcard. If you can see the card after that command it will tell us you have a usb brick, so we'll know what to do.

To be clear, fastboot is both a state of the phone and a program on the computer. When the phone is in fastboot mode you can use fastboot on the computer to send various commands.
 
I ended up giving up and getting a different phone - I'm on call for work a lot, and needed something working sooner than it was looking like the Desire was going to be back online. (Didn't boot without a card or with different card, and the card works in the new phone.)

I'll still go back to it at some point soon, since I'd like it working either as a backup, or to sell or whatever, but for now I'm spending the time getting the new phone configured.

Thanks!
 
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