Root Help Please. Phone frozen at start up.

[t9ernew]

My friend has a HTC Driod Eris that I am trying to fix. The start up screen seem to get stuck at the three driods on skateboards. You should know that I've never used an Andriod phone before and a complete newby (so you will have to dumb down a bit at first but I'm a quick learner). The phone stopped working when my friend lent the phone to someone else to add music to it. I have no idea what that other person did with it so I really don't know where to start.

I've tried resetting to factor defaults but that doesn't work. It just takes me to the hboot menu. In the hboot menu I have options for fastboot, recovery, clear storage and simlock. I tried recovery and all it gives me is a black screen with a white triangle with a yellow exclamation point next to a phone laid on its back. I've tried rebooting with and without the memory card, still no dice.

Any advice on where I should start first?

 

[doogald]

My friend has a HTC Driod Eris that I am trying to fix. The start up screen seem to get stuck at the three driods on skateboards. You should know that I've never used an Andriod phone before and a complete newby (so you will have to dumb down a bit at first but I'm a quick learner). The phone stopped working when my friend lent the phone to someone else to add music to it. I have no idea what that other person did with it so I really don't know where to start.

I've tried resetting to factor defaults but that doesn't work. It just takes me to the hboot menu. In the hboot menu I have options for fastboot, recovery, clear storage and simlock. I tried recovery and all it gives me is a black screen with a white triangle with a yellow exclamation point next to a phone laid on its back. I've tried rebooting with and without the memory card, still no dice.

Any advice on where I should start first?

t9ernew, sorry that I haven't answered this sooner - things have been busy. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time right now, so I'll give a more complete answer later.

For now, though, I think a good start is a hard reset. I'm not sure that this will fix things, but these are the steps (source link)

1. With the phone turned off, press and hold the Volume Down, Send (green phone) and Power buttons. The device will turn on. Keep holding down the keys unto you see a screen to clear storage.

2. Press the track ball.

3. Follow the instructions to complete the hard reset.

By the way, if you can get into that HBOOT screen again (hold down VolDn while powering up the unit), can you report the HBOOT version? It should be something like 1.46.0000, 1.47.0000, or 1.49.0000.

 

[t9ernew]

Thanks for the reply. When I attempt a hard reset it takes me to the HBOOT screen and I am not given the option to clear storage. The HBOOT version on the phone is 1.47.0000.

One other thing I have noticed is that when I click on FASTBOOT and then BOOTLOADER in the HBOOT menu is that it tries to load serveral zip files but lists them as either having either no image or missing image. Is that a problem?

 

[doogald]

Thanks for the reply. When I attempt a hard reset it takes me to the HBOOT screen and I am not given the option to clear storage. The HBOOT version on the phone is 1.47.0000.

One other thing I have noticed is that when I click on FASTBOOT and then BOOTLOADER in the HBOOT menu is that it tries to load serveral zip files but lists them as either having either no image or missing image. Is that a problem?

Fastboot will not do much with the HBOOT 1.47.0000 S-ON bootloader - or much that wil be all that helpful.

Before I start this, it's possible that the phone is borked. However, let's see if we can get it back.

Perhaps we should start by trying to install the root ROM PB00IMG.zip file?

Do you have the ability to copy files to the SD card from your PC? In other words, do you have a microSD card adapter for your PC?

If so, download the file from here: Multiupload.com - upload your files to multiple file hosting sites!

You will want to make sure that the MD5 hash of the file is 63eacc5ede3b179f95dc22d8ef585f94

(Here is one MD5 file checker for Windows: Availability and description of the File Checksum Integrity Verifier utility . If you have a Mac, you can use a terminal command: openssl md5 /path/to/file/pb00img.zip - and you can type openssl md5 at the terminal and then drag and drop the file from a Finder window onto the terminal window to get the path to the file automatically entered.)

If the MD5 does not match, download it again.

Put the file onto the SD card, renaming it to PB00IMG.ZIP (that's pee bee zero zero eye em gee dot zee eye pee). Make sure that the battery is fully charged - running in HBOOT drains the battery pretty quickly.

Next, you'll restart in HBOOT (start up the phone while holding VolUP). If it is in Fastboot mode when you start, press VolDn to change it to HBOOT, which will have it scan for PB00IMG.zip. If it's found, it should say something about loading the image, and then ask you to push to activate - press the trackball. It should start loading the image. Hopefully, this will be successful, load the rooted ROM, and install the HBOOT 1.49.2000 S-ON engineering bootloader.

 

[t9ernew]

Thank for the instructions. I was able to download the file, check the MD5 Hash (no problems there) and put it renamed as PB00IMG.zip on the micro SD file. I then put the file in, started while holding VolUP and it went straight to the three skateboarding droids.

I figured out that I had followed your instructions too literally and added .zip to the file name so the phone wasn't recognizing the file. When I removed the .zip everything worked like a champ! Thanks so much.

By the way. Is the phone now rooted? Just curious.

 

[t9ernew]

Thank for the instructions. I was able to download the file, check the MD5 Hash (no problems there) and put it renamed as PB00IMG.zip on the micro SD file. I then put the file in, started while holding VolUP and it went straight to the three skateboarding droids.

I figured out that I had followed your instructions too literally and added .zip to the file name so the phone wasn't recognizing the file. When I removed the .zip everything worked like a champ! Thanks so much.

By the way. Is the phone now rooted? Just curious.

 

[doogald]

Well, the phone now has a version of HBOOT that will allow you to more easily recover from problems in the future. In fact, I think that this is not yet rooted, but easily rootable. Actually, this particular build of the Eris was experimental and should be replaced anyway.

I think that you should now go through the process of rooting the Eris for now, to get the custom Recovery on the phone. After that you can either install a rooted custom ROM called xtrSENSE, which looks and works exactly like stock Eris though with some of the stock problems removed, or just install a ROM that will return the phone to stock and unrooted. However, the Fastboot-enabled bootloader will remain on the phone, which will make it a lot easier to fix problems in the future.

Anyway, there is a great, illustrated method to finish rooting called the "Universal Eris Root for Dummies" here: http://androidforums.com/eris-all-things-root/127861-universal-eris-root-dummies.html

Of course, you are not a dummy, but this method is fool-proof. You'll use the instructions in the first four posts. However, two quick notes:

- the instructions recommend using a custom ROM called PlainJane, which hasn't been updated in a while. If you want to remain rooted, I would use xtrSENSE instead, which you can download from here: [ROM][GPL][3/15/2011] xtrSENSE5.0.1 [cache2cache,apps2sd,oc,jit]-HTC Sense - xda-developers

- if you want to keep the phone stock, install the Flashback_21v2 ROM from here: [ROM][03/06/2011]FlashBack21 v2 -Return to Factory Stock - March 2011 OTA - xda-developers . I would download the one without the radio, or "FlashBack21_v2_noRadioFlash.zip"

Let us know how it works out...