[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jma5terj:
First - I'm sorry for the long post, but I want to get all the info in up front so I won't waste people's time. I really hope I'm missing something simple that one of you will point out to me. Here's my story.

My newly-acquired (but used) Thunderbolt is boot looping. When I power it on, I get the splash screen for ~5 seconds and a little vibrate. After that the screen goes black for another few seconds and then starts back in on the splash screen. I can boot into the bootloader with power+volume down, but if I boot into recovery from there or try a factory reset I get less than 5 seconds before the bootloop begins again. I cannot get a logcat (adb hangs waiting for the device) when it's plugged in. Here's where I am now (hboot screen):

-REVOLUTIONARY-

MECHA XD SHIP S-OFF

HBOOT-6.04.1002

MICROP-/

RADIO-1.48.00.0906w_1

eMMC-boot

some old date

standard hboot stuff

I had no problems until I activated my verizon service on it.

Having said all of that, here is what I have done since I got the phone a week ago.

Bought phone off ebay with bad battery. Bought two of those aftermarket chinese 1700 mAh batteries, charged them, put one in and booted up. The seller had not factory wiped it (I suppose because she didn't want to get a new battery). I had to go to work, however, so I just left it sitting (powered on) like that for a day.

Next day, I factory wipe it and again leave it sitting on all day. That evening I took it in to Verizon to get a sim card and have it activated. That goes fine, but less than an hour after I activated it the boot looping described above began. I hoped I could fix this later by getting s-off and flashing an RUU and perhaps a fresh ROM. I reactivated my incredible and left the t-bolt off for the night.

3rd day it powers on fine, no problems. I don't do anything with it and nothing bad happens.

4th day I take it in to get activated again (need a new sim card after one has been deactivated for a day, apparently - this is incredibly stupid). It gets activated fine, works for ~5 minutes before boot looping again. Same deal as before and described above. I pulled the battery, reactivated my inc, and left it off for the night.

5th day it again boots up ok. Weekend has arrived, I decide to spend a few hours trying to get through this problem. So I used revolutionary to get s-off and install clockworkmod recovery. A few seconds after it booted into recovery, this bootloop began again. I did, however, have s-off. I decided to try flashing the most recent RUU as my next step. So after waiting 2 hours for it to download, I flashed the 2.11.605.5 RUU. I tried to boot it up but got the same bootlooping as before. I reflashed clockworkmod 5.0.2.1 to try flashing a new rom, no dice - bootloop ~3 seconds after I got into clockwork. I pulled battery and left it off for ~6 hours, tried to boot again, got the same bootlooping result. Gave up for the night.

Today I try again, hoping the over-night sleep will have solved things temporarily as before, but no luck. Same state as before. I can boot into the bootloader and therefore flash RUUs, radios, or recoveries, but I can't get into recovery for more than 3 secs.

Any ideas, or is it done for? I will try anything at this point.