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htc desire a8181 help needed

J

jij

Member
hi, iv an htc desire a8181 - all of a sudden, it can power on, get to htc logo quiet brilliant & repeats

press vol down & hit power, same as above

backbutton & power on gets to recovery cant use vol buttons

power button lets u select fastboot or bootloader, if u select fastboot, when sd card in, it says pp.. no image

-revolutionary-
bravo pvt1 ship s-off
hboot-6.93.1002
microp-031d
touch panel-synt0101
radio-5.17.05.23
aug 10 2010, 17:52:10

i wonder if i should get another, as its rgt size - problem main hand & im naff at tech, but 3g is being phased out? is there anypoint?? been good upto now

excuse the weak explaining of problem

thank
jij
 
What recovery do you have? I ask because this is clearly a modified phone, so I'd expect it to have a custom recovery, and if you are in a loop like this a factory reset is the first thing to try, and some recoveries for this device didn't need the volume keys (it seems odd though if they work in other places that they don't work in recovery mode).

Whether it is worth a lot of effort for a 10 year old phone with 147MB of internal storage (unless you have repartitioned it - I managed to get over 300MB on mind, but you have to use a really small ROM to do that). I assume this wasn't running a stock ROM as there would be very little you could do with android 2.3 these days.
 
j hammond <j7hammond62@googlemail.com>
27 Jun 2020, 18:08 (3 days ago)
to Android

thanks hadron! its android 2.3.6. since i dont use phone, except its my only method of contact..., & three network's 3 2 1 plan is great - £20 last 4ever, if i dont use it, didnt want to get a new one, if it can be sorted out.

my 4gb sd card died, so i put a 2gb 1 in, it worked fine 4 ages - until it kept saying storage low & needs to be 512kb to get messages, i moved all photos from dcim folder etc, but from that, its gone south.
(i put the sd card through admin command prompt & tried again, same prob)

it only vibrated 1 time (7 indicates hardware prob?) on vol down/back button & power on

its bugging when its felt to be fixable?, but know it not jijs ability to fix it

when i get into recovery, pressing power on, switches it between fastboot & hboot

if by custom recovery, you mean htc's, then yes? - dont have tech know how to use developer 1s & stock rom? would be htc

iv an old nokia but stopped using it, as its not 3g compatible - just need a means to contact if needed.

on sd card PB99diag.zip no image


im slow naff with tech, i wrote this second note, not realising you answer via the forum


hi hadron, as you probably gather, i know little tech wise.

i have 5 ruu_bravo files, 3 say wwe & 2 europe



ps when i read the help you given, im moved!, it might be ur interest - but how many breadth of know how or go as far as the limit of their knowing to help - well impressed!!

pps - i got the phone, the year ma died, so it has a significance & im not fashion struck, ie new phone 6 monthly, if it can be fix, good good
 
I used to own one of these (well I still do, it's in a bedroom drawer), and modified it heavily. Back in 2010-11 the Desire forum here was one of the busiest places in AF: this was a great device for its time, despite its limitations, and a favourite for modding.

No, the HTC recovery is not what I mean by a custom recovery. I'm actually quite surprised if you have the HTC recovery on a modified phone. I don't recall the HTC recovery well because I replaced it before the phone was a month old, but as I recall it just shows a black screen and a red triangle. I think you have to press power+volume up to get the menu when in the HTC recovery.

Incidentally I strongly suspect you are running custom software: your hboot says 10-Aug-2010, but you say you have 2.3.6. Android 2.3 hadn't been released at that time, so the Android version is newer than your bootloader, which to me says that you have a custom ROM.

Pressing power toggles you between hboot and fastboot if you don't press the volume buttons to move the selection. Those really aren't working? It would seem odd that power+vol down+back would work and then vol down wouldn't when in the bootloader.

The simplest way of using an RUU is probably via a Windows PC: put the phone in fastboot mode, connect via USB, run the RUU.exe on the PC. The other way is if you have the RUU images in a file called PB99IMG.zip, in which case putting that on your SD card (not in a subfolder) and booting into the bootloader should start the flashing - make sure the phone is charged first! I don't know what's in your PB99diag.zip.

As for which RUU, assuming nothing else has been modified (and I don't see any indication in what you've posted that you are using a custom HBOOT, which would be my main concern) then as long as you are not using a CDMA phone (certain North American networks like Verizon, Sprint) the official 2.3 RUU should work. You can find that at HTCdev.com or here: HTC_Desire_Android_2.3_Upgrade.zip. That last is a zip that contains the RUU and some other files. I'm pretty sure both of those are .exe, but could probably find a PB99IMG.zip of it somewhere (there's a procedure for extracting the zip from the .exe if you want).

As for the RUUs you have, "WWE" means "World Wide English", but that doesn't necessarily tell you what region it's for (e.g. there are Asian WWE RUUs). Perhaps if you told us the full file names, and where your phone originally came from, we could work out which would be the best one to try.
 
hi hadron, forgive my laziness, RUU_Bravo_Froyo_HTC_Europe_1.15.405.1_Radio_32.30.00.28U_4.05.00.11_release_121684.exe 146,133 kb

the phone was unlocked? orange 1st provider? i now use 3network. did i manage to unlock it, if it has/had superuser, i guess yes!?

is the 300mb an easy task? 100% more! wow!!
 
300MB is not an easy task. Back in 2011 there were a couple of ROMs that could work with the system partition shrunk sufficiently to give you that much space - one that would do it out of the box and a few more that could be edited down small enough (my old Desire still has one of them on it). But I very much doubt that those ROMs can still be downloaded (people don't pay indefinitely to host such files), and I've no idea whether the custom hboot images we used to repartition the storage can still be found. I do know that the tool I used to edit my own (because we were tuning the storage to exactly what was needed for some ROMs) hasn't been available for many years. If the code was still available I could probably remember how to do it, but it's not something I recommend to people who aren't comfortable with this stuff, since a mistake can genuinely brick the phone (some people say they've "bricked" a phone if it won't boot, I use the term to mean that it cannot be fixed without specialist phone equipment).

As for RUUs, hmm, this was originally an Orange phone. Unless another particular modification is made (the so-called "super cid", which is possible since the phone is S-Off) that would mean that there is only one RUU out there that will work, which is the official Gingerbread (2.3) RUU I tried to link. I'm using a phone at the moment so won't look for another link just now (phones are too clumsy), but there are other places it can be found.

The problem is that the phone checks the "customer id" number, and only installs the RUU if that matches. The cid identifies which network the phone was originally made for, and unlocking for use on another network doesn't change the cid. And no Orange UK RUU ever leaked. However when HTC released a 2.3 upgrade they only released it as an RUU and they made that compatible with pretty much all cids, so I think that one will work. Otherwise there is a hack to alter the cidnum of an S-Off phone, but it will involve you installing some command line software on your computer. But we can keep that in reserve.

I am a little puzzled that the phone seems to have gained S-Off status using the Revolutionary tool but you don't seem to know about this stuff. Are you not the original owner, or did you ask someone else to do something?
 
saw a compressed zip file from media fire, beanstalk-4.4.247-20140216-bravo-rc1.zip/file 144.55mb - what do you think, could htc a8181 handle it & function nicely?
 
That ROM comes from after my time with the Desire. It looks small enough to fit a standard system partition, but I usually recommend trying to find the ROM developer's thread at xda-developers forum to see whether it has any particular requirements.

Flashing a custom ROM will require a custom recovery. It's not like an RUU.
 
very pot luck, im the original owner, i got superuser by fluke, because what i did, i cant tell or remember. i managed to download beanstalk file & scanned it twice - its clean

found RUU_HTC Desire Android 2.3 upgrade (Gingerbread).exe - gingerbread or beanstalk file
 
Ah, I just downloaded the file I'd linked from shipped-ROMs to check what was in there. The RUU.exe is in it, it's just inside a zip inside the zip.

So the development thread for beanstalk is here. Ignore the image of the Nexus One, this is for the Desire. The two will be quite different, as you can probably tell from the screenshots on that page, since Beanstalk is not based on HTC software so won't have the HTC user interface or apps. If you want to use the Play Store Beanstalk might be better, since I can't remember whether Gingerbread is supported any more (might be, but it's very old), and there may be more apps that are compatible with it - though there will be many apps which don't work with either. I've never used this ROM so can't say how well it works.

The key thing is to look at the "instructions" in the first post of that thread. If you never did any hboot flashing (which is how you change storage partitions) then you should be able to use either ROM, since this Beanstalk needs a stock or near stock partition table. You will need a custom recovery in order to install it, but fortunately the thread has links to those and although I've not downloaded the files it looks like they are hosted by XDA and so are probably still live. I used to use 4Ext recovery with my Desire, which is also capable of partitioning an SD card (so if you don't want to set up the GNU Partition Editor, GParted, that might be the way to go if you choose Beanstalk). The reason it says you must partition the SD card is that it will use the second partition as expansion of the phone's storage (some ROMs use it to fit part of the ROM, but I don't think this is one of those). That will give you more space for apps, but there is some fiddling required to set it up. And with the exception of 4Ext recovery itself, which they've packaged as a PB99IMG, all of the other stuff is installed (flashed) using the custom recovery, including the ROM.

My advice: if you want to try that back up anything important on your SD card (as that will be wiped by partitioning), read the instructions carefully and don't start until you are sure you understand every step and have made sure you can download all of the necessary files (i.e. that they do all still exist).

One thing to consider is that there's no guarantee that flashing the Beanstalk ROM will solve your problem. It really depends on what is causing the bootloop. That is also true of the RUU, except that if the RUU doesn't fix it then nothing else you do will. It might be worth installing the recovery and doing a factory reset (or even trying to do it using the HTC recovery), just to see if that fixes it, then consider what you want to do next. If you want to try Beanstalk I think I'd try that first: you can certainly run the RUU afterwards if it doesn't work, but I'm not 100% certain that you'll be able to install Beanstalk after the RUU. The reason I say that is that while I cannot remember how Revolutionary (the tool you used to get S-Off) worked, the fact that your hboot screen says "Revolutionary" at the top suggests that it replaced the hboot. And if that replacement is important it's possible that the RUU will break it, since the RUU will replace everything, including the hboot. And the Revolutionary tool no longer works, so it won't be possible to run that again even if you have a copy of the tool (unless you also saved the "key" that it requires, since you can no longer get one of those). Hence there's a risk that the Gingerbread RUU will be an irreversible step (may not be: on later HTCs S-Off status was not affected by running an RUU, but the way this stuff was done for the Desire was a bit more "hacky" so that possibility remains).

There is one other RUU that might work, which is the one you get if you go to HTCDev.com and follow the unlock bootloader links. For the Desire that gives you a special RUU (based on Android 2.2) whose bootloader can be officially unlocked, allowing you to use fastboot to install a custom recovery. This does not grant S-Off, and prevented you from ever gaining it, so we didn't use to recommend this, but if you were to lose S-Off status you could consider this one to see whether it at least gives you the option of flashing a ROM. I don't remember whether it works if you've already flashed the 2.3 RUU, or conversely whether the 2.3 RUU works if you've flashed this one, or even whether flashing either precludes the other, so I'm just putting this out there for completeness. As I said earlier, if you are interested in a custom ROM I'd try that first before trying an RUU, but it may be that you need an RUU to get the phone working (or indeed that the problem is a hardware failure, in which case not even an RUU will help).
 
first, i tilt my head, & raise my hat to you.

so the ruu? seems the best route, then attempt anything else from there??

so il need pb99diagimg.zip from the ruu???? is it easy to get, (ie NOT GIFTED) im not even in the same country much less room as urself! with these things

my custom rom thought, was to make the phone more useful on playstore
 
I've not idea what the "pb99diagimg" is (as in I don't know what "diag" is doing in the name and I've no idea what is inside the file: you can use the PB99IMG.zip method to flash an entire RUU or just one partition, and the name doesn't tell us what the contents are).

An RUU is installed from a zip called PB99IMG.zip (case-sensitive). The process for extracting it from an RUU .exe involves running the .exe part of the way and then looking in a folder, but as you need a Windows computer to run the RUU .exe you may as well just do the update using the .exe and not bother with extracting the zip.

I'd be tempted to try the custom ROM bit first if you want to do that. Perhaps a factory reset first (which just wipes data, does not change the system software in any way - the name is a bit misleading), to see whether that gets it working. You can try with the stock recovery or flash a custom one as described in the XDA thread and use that. If that doesn't then you can try the custom ROM, and if it still doesn't work try the RUU then see whether you can still flash the custom ROM (you'll need to reinstall the custom recovery for that, as the RUU will replace it with an HTC recovery). As I say, the only reason I suggest that order is that I'm not 100% sure why Revolutionary modified the hboot, and if that modification was important for getting S-Off then you will lose that permanently if you use the RUU. There is some risk that the RUU will leave you incapable of installing a custom ROM as a result: if you'd asked me back in 2011 or 2012 I'd be able to say whether this was a real concern or not (except back then you could have just run Revolutionary again so it wouldn't have been a big problem).

As for remembering this stuff, between 2010 and 2012 there were a core of people here who were making serious modifications to this phone (I probably tried out dozens of ROMs in 2011, and remember once flashing a couple of custom hboots on one short train journey to work), as well as supporting others who wanted to learn about this or got into trouble: at its peak the Desire forum here was getting dozens of new requests for help in an evening. So although this was all a long time ago, and I no longer remember everything, for a while I this stuff was very familiar to me indeed. This device was really the highlight of android development for me: I modified the HTC One (m7) that replaced my Desire almost immediately, but it never required the depth of modification that the Desire needed. And while my current Pixel 2 is perfectly rootable, I've not actually bothered - the need is less and the hassle in some respects is greater than it used to be.
 
TNK U. ok, my mistake, checkd sd card in fastboot pb99diag.zip & pb99img.zip NOT ...diagimg.zip.

only back & power on gets to fastboot, power switches btween fboot & hboot, vol buttons do 0

power on, gives htc a while, screen black, then htc quietly brilliant for a while, then it goes htc qiuietly brilliant over & over - its almost like it wants to be as was b4 prob

stock recovery refers to htc? available at xda?
custom recovery ie developers work?, from xda?

so i should try stock recovery, which runs on comp? which after entering fboot, connect phone to comp, via usb and follow instructions?

am i anywhere near right? please give baby steps

1 time, i thought phone dying, a chap cleaned the buttons - 'phones fine', didnt even charge, think that could b reason cant use in fboot to move to recovery???
 
Stock recovery refers to HTC recovery ("stock" generally means "manufacturer's original software"), which I think you already have. Custom recovery is a replacement which allows you to do things like take backups of the whole phone (including operating system) and install custom software (ROMs or modifications to the current ROM). The XDA thread I linked for Beanstalk has links to custom ROMs in its instructions.

If you want to try the custom ROM I'd follow the instructions in that thread. For the 4Ext custom recovery the link is to a PB99IMG.zip file containing that recovery: download, copy it to the SD card (not inside a folder on that card) and boot into the bootloader: it should ask you whether you want to install it. After that boot into recovery mode and you should be able to do a reset. Note that a custom recovery is very powerful: you can use it to erase your system as well as do a factory reset! So make sure you either choose an option called "factory reset" or else explicitly erase the /data and /cache partitions only, not others. Then see whether it will boot normally after that. The good thing about 4Ext recovery is that you can drive it via the touch screen, so if a volume key is not working that won't stop you using it.

If that doesn't work, or if you it does and you just fancy trying the custom ROM, follow the instructions in that thread to install the ROM. The basic principle of ROM flashing is "copy ROM .zip file to SD card, boot into recovery, do a factory reset, select option to install the ROM (which may be labelled "flash zip" or "install zip"), "reboot", but in this case I think the instructions included flashing some other stuff ("gapps" = Google apps, and there was some other code for using the extra partition it asks you to add to the SD card), so the best thing is to work through those instructions in order. If there is something in there that isn't clear just ask.

For the RUU, the process is "boot phone into fastboot mode, attach to a PC via USB, run the RUU .exe on the PC, follow instructions on the screen". Only thing to watch is that the phone is properly charged before you start, since it will probably use charge during the installation and you don't want it to run out part way through.

I don't really understand the buttons thing. If they weren't working at all that would be one thing, but if they do work for booting into a special mode (like the bootloader or recovery) but not once you are in there that doesn't make much sense. Unless of course one of the buttons is stuck in the "on" position: what happens if you do the "power+volume+back" thing without pressing the volume button? If the answer is "exactly the same as if you do press the volume button" that would suggest that the volume button is stuck in the "on" position, and I know from experience that if that's the case the volume buttons don't work when in the bootloader (as opposed to working continuously).
 
i downloaded the beanstalk 126kb 4.4.255 zip(4Ext - is/means?), ie not 144kb 4.4.247 zip - ie less storage used, so i need to unzip it, get the pb99img.zip. putp...zip on the sd not in folder - hope it can factory reset, to clear storage ie data and cache partitions

have i understood it/steps right?

so when img.zip's on sd card, as i do back + power (release) should? seek it out,or do i have to press power as when iv done to see pb99diag.zip no or wrong image & pb99img.zip no or wrong image. should i make it so it will show fastboot or hboot as i back + power?
 
I'm not sure which files you are talking about being 126kB or 144kB. The Beanstalk ROM zip is 145 MB (I just downloaded the most recent version, release 6 from the mediafire link to check - the androidfilehost link wasn't working). The 4Ext file is 3.9MB. For these ones you do not need to unzip anything.

4Ext is the custom recovery. This is what you use to install the custom ROM. You cannot install a custom ROM by renaming the ROM zip file as PB99IMG.zip and placing that on the SD card: what is inside the ROM zip file is wrong for that method and it will not work.

To install the custom recovery click on the brown word 4EXT in the "instructions" section of the Beanstalk thread. That takes you to the thread for 4EXT, and the first post there has an "attached file" which is the recovery already packed in a PB99IMG.zip file. Just copy that to your SD card, boot into the bootloader and tell it yes, you do want to install it.

Once that is done you can follow the "installation steps" from the Beanstalk thread. Of course they fail to mention the most important: copy the ROM .zip and gapps zip to the SD card first, so that the recovery can find the files to install them ;).
But it's probably better to do the stuff about partitioning the SD card before the ROM installation, so that if the ROM works you are ready to go.
 
as i do back then power, i c fastboot(white) in red square,

vol & power... below i c
bootloader(white)
reboot
reboot bootloader
power down

press bootloader i c hboot,
vol & power... below i c
fastboot
recovery
clear storage
simlock
i selected boot loader, took battery out, did it again it had gone back to fast boot at top( as default?), so when i have the p.....zip on card, do i press boot loader or will it automatically do whatever & give options
 
ps i note that the troubles started after some time of telling me, internal storage low & 512kb min of storage need to receive texts? could that really have been the kick to the whole problem??
 
Rebooting into hboot mode should be enough to trigger it to look for a PB99IMG.zip. Boot the phone while pressing power+volume down (not other keys, just those two) - to be sure press and hold the volume key before the power key.

The following is quoted from a post by a member here (who I've not seen for years):

After 3-4 secs, the following screen shows up momentarily:
· Fastboot
· Recovery
· Clear Storage
· Simlock
This shows the above few options for 2-3 seconds, and then directly checks for PB99IMG.ZIP. It displays:
SD Checking…
Loading…
PB99DIAG.ZIP
Pb99DIAG.nbh
PB99IMG.ZIP
When it finds PB99IMG.zip, it starts to load it (13 secs after you press the Vol- & power key)

It may be that if you are booting first into Fastboot mode it is bypassing this step, so give the procedure above a go.

I'm surprised the phone complained about 512kB storage, as it should start complaining about low storage when you get below 15MB, I'd not expect low storage to result in a bootloop like this, but that is why doing a factory reset before trying anything else would be a good idea (because if lack of storage is preventing the phone from booting a reset would fix that - heck, wiping the cache from recovery might be enough).

However, this reminds me of a problem: if your volume keys don't work in the bootloader how do you get into recovery mode? I don't suppose the trackpad will do it (not a question really, I'd be surprised if it worked, though it might be worth a go). If you can't get into recovery mode there will be no option except the RUU - when you said you had HTC recovery I assumed this meant you could get into recovery mode, but now I wonder how that would be possible?
 
as i do back then power i c fastboot(white) in red square,

vol & power... below i c
bootloader(white)
reboot
reboot bootloader
power down

press bootloader i c hboot,
vol & power... below i c
fastboot
recovery
clear storage
simlock

i selected boot loader, took battery out, did it again (back then power ) it had gone back to fast boot at top( as default?), so when i have the p.....zip on card, do i press boot loader or will it automatically do whatever & give options?

the beanstalk files, both came from mediafire beanstalk4.4.247 144.55mb(actually 148,012 kb(odd size difference?)) not 144kb & 4.4.255 126mb(126,432kb) not 126kb,

it seems pb99img.zip is step 1, to try and reset it..., then the beanstalk4.4.255.zip (or 4.4.4007.zip from you, best 1?) if successful, is step 2 - am i understanding it right?

so put pb...zip on sd, vol- then power, do i release power after getting in fastboot or keep both held?
 
The first step is to see whether you can get into recovery and do a reset.

If not then installing 4EXT recovery from PB99IMG.zip won't do a lot of good: if you can't boot into recovery mode a different recovery module won't help. Though maybe it would be possible to boot into recovery from fastboot by installing the fastboot command line program on a computer and using that...

Have you put the PB99IMG.zip on the SD card? If you have and it's not already reading it when you switch to hboot we may need to boot it directly into hboot (not from fastboot). Does volume down + power work? That's what should boot into hboot, and then you shouldn't have to do anything to stop the PB99IMG loading (except remove it after use so that it doesn't happen again next time you boot that way!).

148,012 kB is 144.54 MB. Computers use binary units, so "kB" means 2^10 bytes (1024 bytes) rather than 10^3 (1000, i.e. a decimal k). So 1 M = 2^20 bytes (1024 squared) = 1,048,576 bytes, and 148,012 kB divided by 1024 = 144.54 MB.
 
when i put it on sd & vol- 1st then power, nothing happened? except loop. when i did back & power... it still showed 'p...zip wrong or no image'. seems computer option 'fastboot command line program - (is that when you connect usb, then you see fastboot turn to fastboot usb?') is next route, b4 ruu?





Hadron said:
The first step is to see whether you can get into recovery and do a reset.

If not then installing 4EXT recovery from PB99IMG.zip won't do a lot of good: if you can't boot into recovery mode a different recovery module won't help. Though maybe it would be possible to boot into recovery from fastboot by installing the fastboot command line program on a computer and using that...

Have you put the PB99IMG.zip on the SD card? If you have and it's not already reading it when you switch to hboot we may need to boot it directly into hboot (not from fastboot). Does volume down + power work? That's what should boot into hboot, and then you shouldn't have to do anything to stop the PB99IMG loading (except remove it after use so that it doesn't happen again next time you boot that way!).

148,012 kB is 144.54 MB. Computers use binary units, so "kB" means 2^10 bytes (1024 bytes) rather than 10^3 (1000, i.e. a decimal k). So 1 M = 2^20 bytes (1024 squared) = 1,048,576 bytes, and 148,012 kB divided by 1024 = 144.54 MB.
Click to expand...
 
No, if it's trying to read the zip and that's not working booting via fastboot won't change anything. It's a shame that the 4EXT PB99IMG.zip doesn't seem to have an md5 code with it, as that would let you check that the download was intact. One thought though: which zip is it complaining about? It checks for a PB99DIAG before a PB99IMG, so if you still have that PB99DIAG on your card try removing it (we know that one wasn't working, but it might prevent it trying the other one).

But it sounds like your volume key isn't working at all. Was that the case before this problem?
 
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