[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Windows Mobile General] pbutin@aol.com:
Phone won't reboot--stuck on tricolored boot screen

Hi,

Thanks so much for replying. I appreciate you pros helping us novices.

Just after I posted the first note, I pulled the battery and hit the power button, it rebooted, and everything was still there in the OS--working fine. But whenever the device had to be rebooted, I would have the same problem of it getting stuck in the boot screen. After that, for the last several days once in awhile, randomly, it would finally reboot from the boot screen after I pulled the battery and hit the power button. The rest of the time (about 5/1) it would just sit there in the boot screen no matter what I did. The "Serial"/"USB" thing would change when I plugged it in, but that's all.

Thought it was the OS, so at a lucky moment where the "pull battery, hit power button" strategy actually worked, I installed the latest official HTC/ATT Rom--it's the next to last one issued that ends in .4.

It was gorgeous and I got all excited--started installing stuff thinking my problem was solved.

Had to reboot to install some programs--now it is stuck again on the boot screen. Tried 30x again--no luck with the "pull battery/hit power button"

strategy. Sometime it would flash a white screen really quickly saying something like "Can't read image!" before going into permanent boot screen. The boot screen will switch from "Serial" to "USB" if you connect it to the computer. So, the problem doesn't seem to be in the OS--rather, in the ability of the device to "read" the OS from the boot screen.

I would be grateful if you or anyone else may know what's going on here, and any ideas on how to fix it. Is there any manual way to get it to read the OS from the boot screen when that's not happening?

I have two guesses (both of which may be wrong):

1. It may be something in the hardware is just worn out and is less and less able to read the Rom--any ROM. I got the phone new off Amazon for a profit of $50 ($.01 cost plus a refund for an older phone) in the summer of 2010 when it was already outdated. and WP was replacing WM. I've certainly gotten my money's worth after 18 months!

Of course we now know that a brand new ROM has the same problem as the older one--which suggests to me it's in the hardware. I'm sure the new OS and the stuff I installed is still there on the phone, but something it appears is not reading something in order to allow the boot up.

2. I have a squirrely free program called Rax Reset (from Windows Mobile Marketplace) that does a software-based hard or soft reboot from inside the OS. The very last time the device went down and didn't come back up, I had used that program to soft reset it. Might have been a big mistake. Could this program be causing the problem? If so, just one reboot would allow me to get rid of it or even hard reset to remove everything but the new OS--but can't get it to boot.

If it turns out the phone is just worn out, I've certainly gotten my money's worth.

I still love WM even with all its problems--and especially the newer Sense version. If this one is shot, I'm thinking about just buying a new Touch Pro2 on Ebay to avoid all of the sacrifices and backwards steps involved with Windows Phone.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

Phil Butin