[Streak 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kaskeap:
I live in UK, with a Streak 5, updated by Dell to 2.2.2. This is my first smartphone, but I soon stopped using it out of disgust with all the unremovable bloatware.

However, a few weeks ago I managed a successful root (GingerBreak), then used ADB via Win XP to remove the APKs for facebook, ooVoo, twitter, radio, Amazon and a zillion others. The phone became a delight to use, but then, emboldened by my new found power, I rashly assumed that if I removed Stage there would remain a basic default Android launcher. So I very stupildy removed (without backing up...!..) all .APKs with the word Stage in them.

Oh woe.

Phone was still fine, would turn off, reboot (into a blank screen), file system still naviable from my PC with ADB shell, but no way to launch apps or even access the menu from the phone.

So then I did the next silly thing -- factory reset, not realizing this does not restore apps. Now booting never completes after making it past sparkling DELL animation, and even if it finished booting into a blank screen, without root access I would no longer be able to reach the file system via ADB.

However, I successfully connected the phone to my Win XP PC in fastboot mode, but then didn't know what to do next.

I presume I need to get the missing .APKs with Stage in their name back into /system/app from where I so stupidly removed them. I have downloaded update-stageUI360-2.zip, which appears to contain some hopeful-looking .APKs that I presume are intended for /system/app. They don't have the filenames I vaguely recall as the things I deleted, but perhaps that's because they are an update.

But even if those .APKs are what I need, without being able to boot or access the file system via ADB, how do I restore them to their rightful place?

I've read clever how-to stuff in Android fora until my head hurts, but I still lack a proper understanding of how most suggested actions actually work. For example I remain unclear about the word 'flash'. In the Old Days, I understood that to mean burn new data into a firmware ROM, but in Android fora it appears to be more like my current understanding of 'copy' or 'push' to the internal R/W storage.

I've also read and re-read the excellent XDA 'Dell Streak 5/Flashing Guide' but it packs so much pithy info so tightly I'm left going in circles trying to get a rounded picture, because when I seek the meaning of one word or concept, it's often described in terms of other concepts that I also don't understand.

Also I'm confused by extensions like .img, .apk, pkg, .sh, and how Android deals with them.

In the Old Days, a 'ROM' was a lump of read-only hardware, but in Android parlance it seems to mean some kind of pre-formed image. What does it contain, and how is it transferred to where it needs to be in the phone?

What is a nandroid ? What is baseband ?

And what's the difference between .zip and .apk ? If none, why the different extensions? is it so Android's installation management knows how to treat them ?

I apologise for the length of this post. If someone would tell me how to proceed, and hopefully explain what is happening behind those proceedures, I would be most grateful.