[Desire HD Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Wekkel:
Had my share of trouble rooting

For the benefit of people running into the same trouble as I did, I describe my pains in getting root on this great device. I thought it would be a breeze just like the Desire, but things went awry.

Upon purchase, it was running stock ROM version 3.12.405.1. After some reading, I understood that AAHack would be the top choice software to get this baby rooted.

Very important: install the correct (HTC) drivers that come with the AAHack software package. If you do not do so, the device loses connection with your PC at some point (error: < waiting for device >

1st bump: AAHack could not complete the downgrade process: no PD98IMG.zip was found according to the device in Fastboot. Took me an entire evening trying to make this work, including manually flashing a PD98IMG.zip file that I downloaded from somewhere on the Internet.

Bad idea: this flash failed and nearly bricked the device. My ADB connection was totally lost, the device got stuck upon boot in the white screen with green HTC logo. No way of controlling it, other than popping out the battery and restart to get into the same locked white boot screen. The PC could not connect to the device anymore with ADB.

I was almost ready to submit the device to HTC for repair.....

Progress: a day later - after giving it some thought and further reading - wanted to try something. The Official ROMS come as RUU's. The RUU's are .exe files. It turns out that - upon executing this .exe file - a file is decompressed in windows' temp folder (start -> run -> %temp% and look for newest folder) named rom.zip. Just set up the RUU ready for flashing and once the screen pops up with the menu that its ready to flash, start looking in the temp directory for rom.zip.

I downloaded the official 3.12.405.1 RUU and got the rom.zip file this way. Copied the rom.zip file to the Sdcard and renamed it PD98IMG.zip.

Rebooted the device and, voila, fastboot recognized a PD98IMG.zip file and - after some checking - requested whether it should update: YES of course!

So in the end, I got the device working again, but was in the same position again with the official 3.12.405.1 ROM.

2nd try: AAHack would still hang at the same point. But I got lucky. The 32GB Sdcard I ordered arrived. Switched the 2GB sdcard that I was working with and popped the 32GB card in. Big improvement, AAHack pushed forward and no longer hanged. Lesson learned: one sdcard (that is used as goldcard in the process) is not the same as the other sdcard.

2nd bump: baaam, blue screen of death during the rooting process of AAHack. Bummer, and surely the fault of the old laptop I was working with. Result: again a bootlooping/unresponsive device. Thank god I could use the same procedure again with the 2GB Sdcard to get the original 3.12.405.1 ROM back on.

3rd try: switched operations to my regular (proper) PC. This is where I got the problem with AAHack with the < waiting for device > message at some point in the rooting process. Again, install the HTC Sync drivers that come with the AAHack package.

After updating these drivers and a reboot of my PC, tried AAHack again and voila, it worked fine. Currently boosting an ICS Custom ROM with an evil grin on my face.

I hope my experience may help others that get stuck in rooting the HTC Desire HD with ROM 3.12.405.1.