yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[HTC EVO 3D] coal686:
Sprint doesn't care about root, but you are obviously GSM and on a different carrier, so you could unroot it before taking it in and play stupid. "What's this root people are talking about? :confused:"

Sent from my ICS 3VO with Tapatalk 2
[HTC EVO 3D] xXNubCakeXx:
Had this happen with another non HTC device... got it replace, happen to be hardware related.
[HTC EVO 3D] OrjanTonder:
I will send it fully rooted and make them prove that it is the software on the phone that has really done the damage. The burden of proving that the software has made these errors are on the company not the owner. Long shot but worth it, and maybe it will help others. Blaming software for everything wrong with the phone is getting retarded.
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
*note this thread started out to post some general findings, and it has turned into a tutorial on fastboot, scroll through the first few posts to understand more if this first post seems confusing*

So in the past i decided to play with some sense ROMs that requires the Desire Z Hboot. last time i did this i flashed the Virtuous Team's PC10IMG.ZIP through Hboot to do this.

Of course I then had to reflash my radio and recovery and ROM of choice. Later I switched back to my G2 Hboot and again flashed radio, recovery and ROM of choice.

Well why do we have to do all these steps? For fun I decided to look around and see if i could just flash the SPL through fastboot and couldn't find an answer, so i asked a friend and got this response:

Well it works just fine, download the DZ Hboot in the PC10IMG.ZIP format from anywhere you want (its all over XDA) and then extracted all from the .zip.

boot your phone into fastboot and open CMD into the folder the Hboot was extracted to (if you haven't edited the path for fastboot make sure fastboot.exe is in the same folder as the Hboot) in CMD type

fastboot devices

as long as you see your phone listed here proceed (displayed as the serial #)

fastboot flash hboot hboot_7230_0.82.0000_100902.nb0

You're done! Well almost...

fastboot reboot-bootloader

now your phone should say

HBOOT-0.84.2000 (PC1010000)

and you notice your radio hasn't changed

now boot into recovery, you'll noticed it is also still intact, well mostly you should see something like this:

so of course go ahead and do this

you probably wont be able to boot normally as your partitions have now changed so flash a ROM now via recovery, reboot and your golden

*Hope this helps someone... HAPPY FLASHING!

EDIT:

Well I have seen this question a lot lately (or at least similar questions) so I decided to clarify some things here and TO ADD A LINK

this will download the DZ Hboot from the cyanogen wiki (this is only the Hboot, not a shipped ROM)

You will be downloading a .zip format, so extract the image from here

the image will be named

(in windows file extension may be hidden, take note that is important)

so when flashing via fastboot make sure if you use this to type

fastboot flash hboot hboot-eng.img

again you can name the image what you want so long as in your command you specify the file name

eg: i name the image dzhboot.84.img i would then enter the command

fastboot flash hboot dzhboot.84.img

also note these same steps can be used to flash the G2 Hboot found HERE:

just need to change the name of the image or what your command is

If any of the above links are down i have uploaded both Hboots to MY DROPBOX

*If you have more questions feel free to ask here as i am not the best with tutorials :p
[G2 and Desire Z General] strawmetal:
Good to hear that your experiment went out well without incidents.
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
So you need to flash a new radio...

turns out this doesnt even occur to many people as an option, that is to flash a different radio to their mobile. true, when i got my g1 this was the first time i realized this was an option, prior to that i had only dumbphones and did not even know too much how cellular phones in general worked. so to clarify i am not speaking about the fm radio in your car rather flashing the proper firmware to control your cellular radio.

Everyone keeps saying the .19 radio is the best, is that true?

well yes and no, what is true for them may not be true for you. it does appear most people using a g2 or a dz in this forum find the 12.62.60.27_26.13.04.19 radio the best in terms of reception and battery life. but it is good to know that this still has to be determined on a case by case basis. what is amazing for some may be lackluster for others.

so if you feel you need to try a new one the .19 is a good place to start, but you may need to test others and usually you will need to test it for a day or so to know how good it is in comparison. usually it is better not to estimate but rather compare using apps such as Speed Test and Network Signal Info and Battery Monitor etc. just use what works for you

So i can flash a new radio via fastboot?

Yes, and its my preferred method of doing so. its fast, easy and safe. heres how:

download the .19 radio and store it on your computer in a place you can find easy.

*checking the md5sum is a good idea before flashing a rom, and a must when flashing firmware:

turn on debugging on your phone, put in fastboot mode and plugged into computer via usb. now open cmd in the same folder as fastboot.exe

now in cmd type:

fastboot flash radio radio.img

if you downloaded multiple radios then i suggest renaming them, in this case you may need to change radio.img to something like radio19.img or whatever you named it

now again in cmd type:

fastboot reboot-bootloader

you are now in hboot and can verify it worked, congratulations! it was that easy!

for a whole list of radios for the vision go HERE there will be two forms of each radio to download, make sure you download the images only if you want to flash through fastboot. you will also find more info about the radios there.

if you are interested in more then take look HERE FOR ICS and HERE FOR GINGERBREAD edkeys has done great work and its worth at least reading up on it. again if it aint broke dont fix it, but i will say it worked well for me.

*any questions and comments are appreciated, sometimes i go into too much detail and sometimes too little so feel free to ask and/or comment
[G2 and Desire Z General] Nipqer:
Just a thing you might want to consider adding, I generally always 'fastboot erase recovery' before flashing a new recovery. I don't think it makes much difference, but it can't hurt.

-Nipqer
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
cleanleness is next to...

thanks, i do as well and just overlooked/skipped it in the tutorial :p

although im sure it wouldnt make much of a difference if someone just flashed a new recovery over the old, but it is always best to erase as this will lessen the chance of a bad flash due to residual effects from the previous recovery. this goes with most everything in flash memory as so many peoples problems with a newly flashed rom are simply due to them not completely wiping the phone clean.

so when flashing a rom i am a firm believer in performing

fastboot -w

prior to the flash, as it is cleaner than wiping from recovery and even cleaner than most superwipe scripts. of course not every time i flash a rom or restore a backup im next to a computer. in this situation i do recommend to wipe from recovery and then flash SuperWipeG2+ext4 from recovery prior to flashing the rom or restoring a backup. of course most of the time when people flash new roms they are at a computer, in this case i recommend these quick steps prior to the flash:

put phone in fastboot mode and attach to computer

fastboot devices

just to make sure we are ready (looking for serial # here)

fastboot erase system -w
fastboot erase boot

so fresh and so clean

fastboot reboot-bootloader

from here just reboot to recovery and flash the new rom there.

*note - you can flash a rom to your phone through fastboot but i will put that in the next tutorial*
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
flashing a rom with fastboot

As promised... here you go!

now of course you can flash a rom through recovery, but why not have another way? maybe your recovery partition on your phone is corrupt? maybe you just want to say "i learned something new!" whatever your reason here are the simple steps:

To start:

we need to download the rom of choice to your computer. once complete find the folder that rom is in and open cmd to that directory (quickest way just hold shift and right click within that folder > open command window here) of course make sure your phone is plugged into computer and in fastboot mode.

Lets see how quick and easy this really is...

in the command line type:

fastboot devices

see your serial number and we know all is good

now lets type these commands:

fastboot erase system -w
fastboot erase boot
fastboot update superawesomerom.zip

of course replace <superawesomerom.zip> with the correct file name

and last but not least:

fastboot reboot

*its been a little while since i did this but the phone might automatically reboot after flash so no need to run the reboot command

as your phone boots into the new rom, pat yourself on the back...
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
can i restore a nandroid through fastboot?

of course! (why you would need to is irrelevant)

and here are the simple steps how:

well first you need to make a nandroid back up (unfortunately fastboot cant make a nandroid for you :crying: ) put it some where on your computer. personally i only keep maybe 3 or so nandroids on my phones sd card as why waste space. i do however keep almost all my nandroids on my computer separated into diffrent folders for different phones. so my path to a nandroid backup would be something like:

and the obvious stuff:

have phone plugged into pc via usb and in fastboot mode, open cmd and change directories to that folder where your nandroid is in (or again just hold shift and right click > open command window here)

once we are in:

in cmd type:

fastboot devices

all is good when serial number is displayed, now type:

fastboot erase system -w
fastboot erase boot

*this isnt 100% neccessary but im a firm believer in wiping before any flash, even a backup

fastboot flash userdata data.img
fastboot flash system system.img
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot reboot

(of course change the image names if needed)

and you did it! :good: now you are almost a pro at using fastboot!

keep playing around, you'll get the hang of it and will quickly see that this is one of the best tools in the android sdk. it makes things much faster and easier and in many cases safer than the alternatives. any questions... feel free to ask!

Happy Flashing!

*as nipqer was so kind to point out, most newer recoveries archive nandroid backups in tar format by defult. this will not work with fastboot unfortunately.
[G2 and Desire Z General] Nipqer:
for the restoring a nandroid, you gotta make sure the backups are done in yaffs2 format don't you? fastboot doesn't work with tar's as far as I know.

Clockworkmod 3.x and lower have the yaffs2 as default, but at least 5.x (and 4ext) use tar as default, but I know 4ext has a setting so you can change it.

-Nipqer
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
I believe you are correct. I haven't restored a nandroid via fastboot since the g1 days but that sounds about right. looking at my g2 nandroids some are in yaffs2 and some not, ill look into it and post a better explanation.

and it looks like every nandroid i made since i flashed 4ext recovery is saving everything as tars (except the boot and recover image) when i first rooted and used clockwork 3.x ? those backups were in yaffs2. it looks like one could change the settings in the 4ext app to change from tar archives to yaffs, but if all you are doing this for is to boot a backup from fastboot that is silly :silly:

so although it still is possible, it would not be worth the effort unless you were to do it for sheer fun. or if you still have an old android device lying around and want to try it out.

also if you updated to a new recovery and your old one used yaffs2 and the new one works with tar (i think twrp uses a modified tar/ext4 image called .win?) well you cant flash those old backups in your new recovery, but you can still flash them from fastboot. and then later do a nandroid with your new recovery in the proper format. so with this i guess there still may be a reason for someone to flash a nandroid via fastboot.

thanks for the heads up nipqer! id hate to make someone think they did something wrong when they didnt!
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
Some other uses...

What else can i do with fastboot?

ADB has more (but different) capabilities than fastboot, but fastboot can still be handy. Heres an example: you went through the rooting process on your Vision a while back and cant recall if you sim unlocked it or if you gained super CID. well simple, lets:

open cmd, navagate to fastboot (no other folder/files necessary here) and type:

fastboot devices

and you should see your serial number, good

fastboot getvar cid

if you are sim unlocked and (superCID) then the output should read

if not, and you want it, then you will have to downgrade and rerun gfree etc. or you could beg tmobile for an unlock code or you can buy one from elsewhere. any way you go about it, this will tell you if it worked.

*super CID and sim unlock are not the same thing, i am just assuming if you have super CID then you also sim unlocked. (super CID lets you flash different software and firmware to your phone that initially may be locked to a specific carrier, sim unlocked allows you to use any GSM sim card no matter the carrier. although some require specific radio bands to fully work)

And more hypotheticals?

well to get your model id you would do the same only change the command to

fastboot getvar mid

out put will be something in the lines of

there are reasons to change/fake your model id, maybe for apps in the market or to tweak a kernel... im not a developer so the purposes may be many or few on this.

Get a bunch of info quick:

fastboot getvar all

this give a slue of info such as radio, bootloader, imei, cid, secure flag (on/off) and more!

Speaking of kernels...

lets say you are a developer and have worked on a new kernel for your device, a quick and easy way to test it out may be to fastboot load the kernel:

fastboot erase boot
fastboot boot kernel ramdisk

*as always replace file/image names accordingly

after testing is completed:

fastboot flash:raw boot kernel ramdisk
fastboot reboot

test it out and see how things go! good luck!

as always, if you have questions or comments feel free to leave them here!

Happy Flashing!

*im thinking about adding a simple tutorial about ADB if anyone is interested let me know
[G2 and Desire Z General] alarmdude9:
If you flash from the g2 to the dz hboot thingie and have to reformat /system does it mean time to flash a new rom? And can you reflash a ext backup back since the partition info is different?
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
Yeah after updating to the dzhboot you will need to reformat, this will wipe your current Rom. But most often you should have no issue taking your nanadroid made while on the g2 hboot and restoring them to you phone with the new system partitions you get with the dzhboot.

As always make a backup of current set up via recovery, follow the steps listed in the first post and then flash either a new Rom or your nandroid. Also make sure to check the md5sums.

If you need any further help feel free to ask

Happy flashing!
[G2 and Desire Z General] alarmdude9:
Umm wow that was like super easy. Thanks for the guide. Going to have to read some about the radios and see about doing that next.....
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
no problem, many seem to either be afraid of using adb or fastboot mostly because they dont understand it and see other options to do the things they want (recovery)

but in reality both are quite easy to get used to and it really helps with the understanding of what you are doing. so im glad this guide is helping people not just get their phone the way they like it but also help understand the process.

as for the radio its just as simple as flashing the bootloader. mind you any time you flash firmware to your phone there is potential harm (unlike with flashing roms) so its not a great idea to just flash away for no reason. but fastboot is a very safe way of flashing firmware and as long as you check md5sums your good. also make sure never to do a battery pull during a flash or if something goes wrong just dont reboot until it is fixed, knowing these few things will ensure safe flashing through fastboot and help understand why firmware shouldnt be flashed through recovery.

so if you feel you could get better reception and/or battery life with a new radio by all means go for it! i for one found the .19 radio to be the best for me along with edkeys package. it seems many feel the same but the only way to know what works for you is to try it!

Happy Flashing!
[G2 and Desire Z General] alarmdude9:
I do agree it's not that hard once you have a clue. One thing I would say you may want to be a bit clearer on (at least me and my braindead self took a while to grasp it) is that you need to be in the bootloader to use the fastboot command. I am still learning about stuff and with the crazy hours I work and with 3 kids sometimes it takes me a while to get stuff done because I want to understand it before I do it. Although with your guide once I had time to sit down and do it it was like 15 mins tops and all was done. I need to read about the radio and edkeys(whatever that is...) and see about doing it. I think I have the .15 radio and it works ok although if I understand correctly wifi calling only works with the .19 radio and who knows it may fix my mms issues when I try ics roms.....
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
Thanks for the suggestion, ill add that in there, I always miss some little things! Edkeys is a member here on xda who did a lot of research on radios and WiFi calling, I linked a couple of his pages in my post on flashing the radio, I definitely suggest reading up on his work as he will explain it better than I. Also note some users have issue using WiFi calling and an old sim card, if you go to a local T-Mobile outlet they'll give you a free updated sim. I think the latest is 9177? Not sure but its written on the card.

Thanks for the suggestion!
[G2 and Desire Z General] soadfan:
USB debugging is on.

I'm running Mimicry 1.5

root access is setted to apps and adb in the developer options in settings
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
what is your current bootloader information? can you write down the first few lines on the top of the screen?
[G2 and Desire Z General] soadfan:
vision pvt ship s-off

hboot-0.85.0013

microp-0425

radio-26.13.04.19_m (flashed before about 2 weeks via cwm)

eMMC-boot

apr11 2011,23:36:27
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
yeah, so you need an engineering spl to have full access to your phone

fastboot commands need an eng hboot - the first post in this thread will explain how

the first line should read

vision pvt eng s-off

and the second should be

hboot-0.84.2000 ----------------- this is for eng dz hboot

or

hboot-0.76.2000 ----------------- this is for eng g2 hboot

choice is yours and both options should be in the op, if you like sense roms choose the dz, if you dont ever use or plan to use sense that either will do

EDIT:

actually i just realized you wont be able to change hboots using the fastboot method, so you will need to do this:

*instead of writing my own tutorial on this i just copy and pasted the steps and the links from the virtuous teams site. it may be a good idea to remove the radio from the .zip first and also make sure to delete the file from sdcard when you are done or you can have troubles getting into recovery later (from bootloader screen)
[G2 and Desire Z General] soadfan:
Well i'll do it when i have time to play around. Is that bad to install new recovery without erase old one. I can try devs app but i'm not sure it will remove old recovery first.

EDIT: OK, i have 4ext recovery 1.0.0.5 rc6
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
great! so did you update to the eng hboot?
[G2 and Desire Z General] soadfan:
No, I installed it from 4ext recovery control app.

The only one problem for the moment is that saves backup to the sdcard/clockwork and can't find way to change it in settings.
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
well im glad it worked out either way but @ some point you should still consider the engineering hboot, it may help you out a lot in the future.

as for the backups being saved in clockwork folder i gave up on trying to find the answer to that one a long time ago, but since you asked i asked madmaxx82

someday this may change but for now, well we get to deal with it!
[G2 and Desire Z General] soadfan:
I think he has saved it as a template since i got same answer. I will flash eng boot someday, but i have this question if i remove radio and recovery from the zip will it flash properly? And can i flash it via 4ext recovery menu (install zip from sdcard) or it should be in the root of sdcard as PC10IMG.zip
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
well I put together a couple PC10IMG.zip, one for the g2 eng hboot and one for the dz eng hboot, both include the .19 radio, rcdata to match, and one of the latest 4ext touch recoveries. ill post them in the op here to make it easy on people. tested them myself a few times going back and forth and thery work great. but for anyone who already has an eng hboot I would suggest doing everything via fastboot so they can learn, get any error code if it were to come up, and if there is an error it is much safer as you can fix any error before you reboot
[G2 and Desire Z General] soadfan:
Okay, but i already have .19 radio and latest before test version of 4ext touch recovery, so i need only hboot is there such a think with md5 sums?
[G2 and Desire Z General] demkantor:
Flash these through bootloader

um, md5sum is just well a sum, it is a unique algorithm to make sure the file downloaded matches (complete/ no corruption)

you can flash just the Hboot, but it also makes no difference if you were to flash the same firmware over the same firmware. so you don't need to bother extracting anything. ill post when I get home,

~make nandroid in recovery

~download

~check md5sum

~name PC10IMG.zip

~put on SDcard

~boot to Hboot

~let it run, it will reboot halfway (needs to cycle emmc)

~let it finish

~reboot to recovery (via adb)

~reformat all in recovery

~remove PC10IMG.zip from SD

~restore nandroid and reboot to OS

EDIT:

DROPBOX LINK ill upload to op when i get a minute but for know here is this

md5 for g2:

d21938597a5d2f409b145a334181738a

md5 for dz:

fdf67760aad635b764a623fe7703776f

*thanks again to nipqer for pointing out my obvious mistakes creating these!

EDIT:

Not sure if i made this clear earlier - flashing firmware using any method is potentially

dangerous. Although very unlikely if you follow these steps I'm still throwing out the waring.

If at all possible it is still best to use fastboot to flash these as an error will be given

to you and you can fix your issue before you reboot and make things permanent.

The above is also dangerous without having true radio s-off, if you are not sure

if you have true s-off - follow these steps:

download THIS COPY OF GFREE md5sum:

8e3535fd720d19fa0aec4eb711b897c4

now unzip it and open a command where gfree is on computer - have phone plugged

in, debugging on and screen unlocked (after you type "su" you need to grant superuser permissions.)

Now type:

adb push gfree_verify /data/local/tmp
adb shell chmod 755 /data/local/tmp/gfree_verify
adb shell
su
cd /data/local/tmp
stop ril-daemon
./gfree_verify

If this is your output, you are in good shape!

gfree verify_cid returned:
@CID: 11111111
OK
gfree verify_secu_flag returned:
@secu_flag: 0
OK
gfree verify_simlock returned:
@SIMLOCK= 00
OK

@CID: 11111111 means you have superCID (able to flash all software once locked out of)

@SIMLOCK= 00 means you're sim-unlocked (able to use any carrier's sim card)

@secu_flag: 0 this means your radio is S-OFF (This is the important info needed!)