Help HTC Desire S booting to bizarre screen!

[gareth303]

Hi guys,

A bizarre one this I hope you can help. My wife's phone stopped working recently and went off to HTC to be repaired. It came back with a note saying it was 'beyond economic repair' and wouldnt switch on, so I thought that was the end of it! However I thought I'd try it one more time and it powered up to screen titled SAGA PVT SHIP S-ON RL

I gather this is some sort of debug screen that appears when flashing the ROM of a phone, but I have no idea how to proceed, or even if the phone is actually fixable.

If someone could direct me on simply attempting bringing this phone back to life? I dont want to do anything fancy, just get it working again.

 

[iowabowtech]

That is the bootloader screen aka hboot on an HTC device. There should be a "clear storage" option which will perform a factory reset if all goes well. Most likely you will use the volume keys to scroll and the power button to select that option.

If that does not work, you could try loading the factory rom onto the SD card which should be recognized from the hboot screen. After a successful recognition, you can then load it by pressing volume up. Let us know if the clear storage fails and this option can be explored in greater detail. First thing we would need to do is locate the factory rom. Also, ALL this assumes you don't have a corrupt internal storage or other hardware failure which may well be the case if it was marked as unrepairable or not worth repair.

Lastly, I'm moving this thread to the Desire S forum for device specific help. If you have any questions/concerns about the move, please PM me.

Cheers,
IBT

 

[gareth303]

Wow many thanks for the swift reply. I can see an option for 'factory reset' - its in red. I can move to it using the 'up volume' button but when I press power nothing happens. The screen says this in total

SAGA PVT SHIP S-ON RL
HBOOT-0.98.0000
RADIO -38.03.02.11_M
eMMC-boot
Mar10 2011, 14:58:38

HBOOT (in white with blue highlight)

<VOL UP> to previous item
<VOL DOWN> to next item
<POWER> to select item

FASTBOOT
RECOVERY
FACTORY RESET
SIMLOCK
IMAGE CRC


I assume eMMC-boot means its looking for a ROM on the MMC? If someone could explain to me how to get the right rom onto the SD card I'll try that.

The other wierdness is the VOL_DOWN button doesnt seem to do anything, only the VOL_UP moves the selection. Power button doesnt seem to do anything on any option

 

[iowabowtech]

Is this a European version by chance? Ok so here's what I've found and with the info I have so far, it's sketchy. But I think we are looking at the 7th RUU from the top on this page:

FileFactory Folder View - Saga

Note how it matches the radio # from the hboot stats you posted. So then IF that is correct, you'll want to try and download it. It's tough to get a free download from that site, but it's the only one I can find. You'll probably fail to get a download slot several times, hopefully you'll eventually get it. Then you can try to go to fastboot mode and attempt to run the RUU. The RUU is a windows .exe program so you to have the phone plugged into the USB port on your computer. You want your computer to show up as "fastboot usb" on your PC. If it's not recognized, you may have to download HTC Sync for the Desire S from the HTC site. It should come packaged with the necessary drivers for USB recognition. Only do that if you need to and you don't actually have to even open HTC Sync. It's only downloaded for the accompanying drivers.

If successful, the RUU program walks you through all the necessary steps to reflash the phone to stock. If you cannot get recognition, you may have to extract the rom.zip from the RUU. If need be, here's a tutorial on how to do that:

The 'No Idea' Blog: Extracting ROM files from a HTC Android RUU

In that event, you end up with a file named rom.zip and you must rename it to the particular code number that your HTC phone looks for when hboot loads. You'll probably see some text flash on the screen when you first boot into hboot (hopefully). I THINK the right name for your phones file is PG88IMG. So you rename the rom.zip to that exactly (try to verify that will a Google search to be sure). Then place on SD card, power down phone and do the usual volume down + power to get back to your hboot screen and hope it gets recognized. Then press power up to load and wait until the progress bar on the right hand side of the screen goes all the way to the top. It'll then prompt you to reboot. Should be on stock at that time if all goes well.

Good luck.
IBT

 

[FoX777]

Spot on info above.