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Root Root gonw wrong! What can I do

KirstineN

Lurker
Hi

I hope somebody can help! I tried to root my phone but something clearly went wrong! My screen is black and there is a red triangle on it.

I tried a guide where I should use 'Android USB driver' but ind the processes it just said that the best driver was installed. I then pulled the plug and then this screen showed up. What can I do?? have I ruined my phone?
 
No, these things are almost always fixable. But to find the best solution it would help to know a bit more about your phone and what you did.

I suspect we are going to have to flash your phone back to stock with an RUU. So if you can tell us more about the phone it will help identify the right package to use. So is the phone GSM or CDMA, what software version (as far as you know), is it network branded or not and if so which network?

It might be useful to know what your hboot information is. Boot the phone while pressing the volume down key (you may need to pull the battery out to shut it down) and tell us what it says on the white screen with the little androids at the bottom.

Finally, what method did you use to try to root it? As much information as possible about what you did and what happened. But TBH I leave this to last as I suspect that you will need to reflash the phone completely.

For information, the black screen with the red triangle is the HTC recovery program. However, on an unrooted phone it doesn't let you do much.
 
You are gsm (uses a sim card). Cdma would say bravoc. As you are already soff you can just fastboot flash a custom recovery and install a custom rooted rom. I think this is all covered in the faq's in my signature
 
Okay thanks. Can you perhaps guide me a bit further. How do I fastboot flash a costum recovery and what does it mean? I'm sorry, i'm just really not used to this:-)
 
OK, my Danish is limited to being able to order a beer, but I see the word "unrevoked" in there. But it doesn't sound like you got as far as running unrevoked, which is the actual rooting tool. So this happened when updating the drivers on the PC?? Why should that affect the phone?

So what's happening is that the phone thinks there's something wrong with the android software and is booting into recovery mode. But on an unrooted phone recovery mode is pretty useless - you can do a factory reset (wipe apps and data), but not much more. Of course if the reason the phone isn't booting is because some data have been corrupted that might be enough.

While we are at silly ideas, have you tried the following:

1) pulling the battery out without shutting the phone down. Leave the battery out for a minute or so, then replace and reboot. Sometimes this is enough.

2) booting without the SD card in the phone. If this works the problem may be that the card was corrupted.

Worth trying those simple things before doing anything more radical. Probably won't work, but you never know, and it would save some hassle if they did.

As for the phone, I can see that you were running android 2.2 (the radio version tells me that). And if you are Danish then the phone is GSM. CDMA is a standard that's mainly used in North America, and nowhere in Europe. The way to tell is "does your phone have a SIM card?" - if "yes" then it is GSM.

Network branding: were there any network-specific apps, or was there a network logo on the splash screen when you booted it? If not then it's probably unbranded.

The reason that matters is that if we try to reload the phone using a ROM Update Utility, those will check the "customer ID" of the phone, and will only run if that matches the RUU. So you generally won't be able to run an unbranded RUU on a network-branded handset, unless you use a trick called making a "goldcard". That however is much easier when the phone is running, so now isn't a good time (I also know little about these, since I have an unbranded phone). But there should be a solution anyway.

One interesting thing is that the phone is "S-Off". I take it you haven't made any previous modifications? The hboot screen didn't say "Revolutionary" on the top (you didn't mention this), so I assume you just have one of the unusual ones that came that way. Probably this doesn't help us though.

So, if the "simple/silly" things above don't help, I'm afraid that our remaining options will erase all data from the phone. You could try to just do this from the recovery program (black screen, red triangle) and see whether this works. Otherwise a ROM Update Utility should bring the phone back, but it will erase it in the process.

You can download a ROM Update Utility from shipped-ROMs. If the phone is unbranded then the unbranded World-Wide English version with the same software you originally had might work: RUU_Bravo_Froyo_HTC_WWE_2.29.405.5_Radio_32.49.00.32U_5.11.05.27_release_159811_signed.exe is the most recent one of those. If that one is not accepted, near the bottom of the page there is the official HTC Android 2.3 upgrade. Inside that zip there is the RUU, as well as some other bits and pieces (one of which may even be instructions!). This works on a wide range of different networks, so there's a good chance that this one would be good even if your phone is branded.

How to use a RUU: download the RUU to a Windows PC. Boot the phone into Fastboot mode (select that from the hboot menu, or boot the phone while pressing the "back" buton). Connect to the computer and it should say "fastboot usb" on the phone screen. Then run the RUU .exe on the computer.

(If you don't use Windows there is another way, but from your earlier post I believe you do).

Hopefully one of these options will do the job. Do make sure your battery is well charged before running the RUU though, and never interrupt that once it is running. It will replace the whole of the phone's software, including critical components (the android system is not critical, but the bootloader and radio firmware are), so you don't want these things to be interrupted. Check you have a good download of the file before doing it - shipped-ROMs provide "md5 codes" you can use to check, and there is a post on how to do this linked in the All Things Root Guide sticky post in this forum.

Finally, when the phone is working again, that same sticky post has links to the guides that the people here have compiled on how to root the phone. If you use the 2.3 update you'll need to use a different method, called Revolutionary, to root after that.

Good luck!
 
To answer your question to Shauny: see the "adb and fastboot faq" linked from the All Things Root Guide sticky post (which is the red link in my signature).

You could try that - I did wonder when I saw that you are S-Off. I'm just not sure whether that works with a factory S-Off device. But there's not much to lose.

If you set up fastboot on your computer, boot the phone into fastboot mode, then connect (as I said in my previous post), you can flash a custom recovery by downloading a recovery image then using the command from the adb and fastboot faq (fastboot flash recovery <whatever you called the recovery .img>). I usually recommend 4Ext Touch recovery - the first post of that thread has a direct download link for the GSM version of the recovery. But you do need to do a bit more setting up, and I'm not certain whether your phone's bootloader will accept the "fastboot flash recovery" command. If it does though you could do that, then copy a custom ROM onto your SD card and install that using recovery.
 
THANK U! It's working again using the easy solutions!:-) Just to be clear, my phone is not rooted now? It's just the same as before I startet and not I should root by Revolutionary?
 
Excellent :D

I doubt very much that your phone is rooted. If you didn't get as far as running unrevoked then it certainly is not. Check in the app drawer, and if there isn't an app called Superuser then you are not, but unrevoked would also have installed a custom recovery, which you don't have, so I'm quite certain it hasn't been rooted.

Being on 2.2 you should be able to use either unrevoked or revolutionary. We have guides to using both in that sticky post.

Out of interest, which of the simple methods did it?
 
It's actually a bit embarrassing....I took the battery out for about two minutes....I had already taken it out once but apperently not long enough...again thank u, I hope I will succeed this time:-)
 
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