[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] Hi7ch:
Hi guys. I seem to have outdone myself and am now stuck with a phone that plain refuses to boot any more. Let me give you some history so you get the full story.

Not long after I got my U8800 (18 months ago, 'ish) I decided to change my ROM to MIUI because I wanted to get rid of Froyo and Huawei were being incredibly slow to update officially. I did this with minimal troubles and ran it for a long time, updating etc. as needed to be done. Then along came ICS ports and I admit it, I had to fiddle once more...

I downloaded Aurora and read up in here on how to get it on my phone. It seemed before I did anything I needed to set my phone back to the defaults I had and this involved installing Froyo then the latest stock ROM for the U8800. I did all this without hassle and then tried to get the ICS on.

I don't know if it was me, bad reading, something built into the new stock ROM or what, but I could not get the ICS ROM on my phone no matter what I tried. It seemed to have issues deciding if it was rooted or not, it said it was but then failed to work when I needed it to, plus CWM Recovery completely failed to work for me and I just kept getting the stock recovery when trying to boot into it. ROM Manager was also being a pain and kept insisting my phone was a U8160 when previously it had worked as a U8800 (I may have flashed to the U8160 and having thought this I assumed this was my mistake).

I tried various methods of getting to my cust_ folders and manually changing the recovery.img but everything I tried ran into the same "is it or isn't it rooted" problem.

At this point I gave up and stayed with the official stock ROM from Huawei for a bit.

Two days ago I decided I couldn't hack the defaults any more, my phone was slower and I missed the MIUI way of doing things. I decided to have another go!

Ok, we are up to date, thanks for reading so far if you have.

I decided to try getting to the recovery.img again by doing the pink screen and connecting to my PC, problem was when I did this nothing ever showed on my PC, so I looked for other methods.

I uninstalled ROM Manager, because it still insisted I had the wrong phone and found the app, Root Explorer, it worked! Wish I'd have found it weeks ago. I instantly had access to the folders I needed and could mount them etc to overwrite/backup my recovery.img and as I was a little worried about the rooting thing again, despite Root Explorer working I though what harm can it do to overwrite the boot.img too. I did both by copying the originals to my SD Card and pasting the new ones that I had previously placed on my SD Card through the USB connection. I used the files recommended here: http://android.modaco.com/topic/340...-and-then-some-for-the-huawei-u8800-ideos-x5/ and here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=14870348

I rebooted the phone and again failed to get into CWM Recovery, just the default Android one.

I then hunted down another recovery and found this: http://www.androidxpert.com/2011/08...k-work-mod-recovery-on-huawei-u8800-ideos-x5/

It worked! I could finally get into CWM Recovery and figured I was home free.

Not so :(

I then downloaded the same stockwell MIUI I had used previously as I knew that worked, his latest stable version, and dropped the zip on my SD Card. Went to install it and found that CWM Recovery refused to mount my SD Card (16 gig sandisc). Tried a couple more times because I had issues with this card before and then the card ended up corrupted or something because it just refused to work now on anything I had. This was fairly major because I had backed up to this SD Card and forgot to take the backup off and into my PC for safer storage... I know... I do have the back up of recovery and boot.img though on my PC.

It was at this point I noticed I had a boot loop but could still get into CWM Recovery.

Not panicking too much, I tried my old 4gig SD Card, it mounted! I copied the MIUI Rom across to this card, booted into recovery and selected it. It stated it was installing etc but seemed to go pretty quickly. It said it was done so I rebooted as is the norm. Boot Loop. Damnit! Tried this a couple more times, made sure I once again wiped cache, dalvik etc, all of the things it states to do on the ultimate guides etc. Nothing.

Again, still not panicking I thought, fine, I will go back to stock rom. Downloaded the correct one, dropped dload into root, booted using vol + and - and up comes the unpacking screen. Trouble is it refuses to unpack. I quickly look on the net and find that some say if you take the battery out and connect just using the USB it will install it that way, maybe it does for them but it doesn't for me, it just boot loops again.

I am now at my wits end.

I have the feeling its something to do with my changing of the boot.img and I have the original should it be that but I cannot access the insides of my phone through Windows to change anything, plus of course I can't boot the phone due to the loop to change it back using Root Explorer (otherwise it would work anyway).

Is there anything you guys can help me with?

I can install Linux if needed, I read that it lets you view the phones file system better compared to Windows and with my slight knowledge of Linux Id quite expect this but even so, I am not sure what to do.

Any advice/solutions are extremely welcome.

Sorry for the long post, figured I should give as much info as possible.