[Upgrading, Modifying and Unlocking] Captain_Glen:
Hello,

I recently had a "HTC" (Chicony) Hero GSM donated to me. I have managed to root it, but I am unable to load a custom ROM, which kind of defeats the purpose.

I CAN INSTALL MOST MARKET APPLICATIONS, which to me indicates it has most of the legit android system.

To root it I pushed su via adb and then used su on SuperUser.apk, which I downloaded from the market. This worked fine.

However I can't download ROM manager though. It is not available in the market. If I try to copy the .apk file (newest or an old version 1.8.?) it says it can't be installed on the phone. I suspect my "version" of android is not supported.

I was hoping to get some help...

My version of android is:

Model number

G03CE

Version information

05020008_76A805

Also if I type in lsusb I get:

Bus 001 Device 006: ID 04f2:a142 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd

Things I have tried:

Ubuntu 10.10:

1. Fastboot - fail can't boot to recovery

2. adb flash_image recovery recovery.img - fail CAN'T FIND RECOVERY PARTITION

3. Install RomManager - fail can't install

4. Z4root - fail can't install

5. Unrevoked3 - fail nothing happens

6. Put recovery.img in /system/ - fail nothing happens but I get a force close error about the recovery.img on startup also kills my usb connectivity

7. Install romdump both via adb and terminal emulator - fail won't install just hangs

8. flash-rec.apk - fail can't backup or flash recovery: gives unknown ebi version as error msg and flash recovery is greyed out.

Windows XP:

9. SuperOneClick Root - fail waiting for device (no drivers?)

10.

http://forums.regawmod.com/showthread.php?tid=6

- fail (no drivers?)

11.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=559622

- fail (no drivers?)

Getting Drivers on Windows XP:

1. Install Google SDK.exe and download drivers - appeared to work but did not allow device to have recovery flashed

2. Installed latest version of HTC sync - fail no device connected

3. Installed version 2.4 of HTC sync - fail no device connected

4. Installed PDANET on phone and PC appeared to work (only with google drivers though) and did not allow any of the apps to flash a custom recovery.

Also I can't get it to boot into recovery via any combination of keys. However I was able to get:

adb reboot recovery

to reboot to a broken recovery screen with a big exclaimation mark and a picture of a phone. However even in this screen fastboot devices yields nothing.

My opinion of the problem:

I do not have a recovery partition. I checked this by:

adb shell
su
cat /proc/mtd

This yielded that all mtb1, mtb2 etc were all empty. They should be boot, recovery, etc as I understand it.

http://android-dls.com/wiki/index.php?title=HOWTO:_Unpack%2C_Edit%2C_and_Re-Pack_Boot_Images

Apparently romdump can be used to create new partitions, see here:

http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/how-to-backup-your-android-phones-boot-recovery-and-system-partition-images/

But I could not make it work even with root.

Anyway I am pretty confident if I can just force it to make a recovery partition and dd copy the files from an .img file to that partition I can make it work. But I am a n00b at android rooting (I have only rooted one nexus one and that is it).

I am all out of ideas. If someone could please help it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Glen.