[HTC Desire S] About:blank:
Hello Everyone,

My Desire S was running Fallout 4.0 ROM. I had a couple sudden restarts in the last week and a half, but they seem to have been graphic related and because I didn't have the time to re-install, I just lived with it (not a big deal) for the time being.

However, yesterday when I picked up my phone I have noticed that it is stuck on the HTC boot screen. I thought that this is just another one of those restarts, but when the boot operation didn't progress I figured that something is wrong. I booted into recovery (CWM 5.0.2.0) and then got the infamous errors of can't mount Cache/System/Data.

This when my troubles have began because I cannot seem to be able to solve this issue.

1) From within the "mounts and storage" menu I cannot mount nor format the partitions (I get an error such as "Error mounting /cache!" and "Error formatting /cache! The latter takes also a long while in which the format is being attempted but in the end the error appears)

2) When I choose the wipe option (restore factory defaults) it takes a very long time (30-40 minutes) to wipe the data and cache partitions. Sometimes it gives an error message and some time it says complete, but with not effect whatsoever from what I can tell.

3) Attempt to restore my Nandroid backup fails (both of the original stick ROM that came with the phone and the more recent Fallout backup). An error message says that it cannot be completed.

4) I tried to flash several ROMs. The first two failed (including the original Fallout ROM that I have used). I think that I have managed to flash CM7 and RunnyDroid. I say think, because the process seem to be completed without an error, but nothing has changed otherwise, the system doesn't boot.

5) I checked my eMMC by booting into Fastboot and running the command

adb shell
dmesg | grep mmc0

from adb.

The output is

dmesg | grep mmc0
<3>[6.953796] mmc0: No card detect facilities available
<6>[6.954345] mmc0: Qualcomm MSM SDCC at 0x00000000a0500000 irq 98,
<6>[6.954589] mmc0: Platform slot type: MMC
<6>[6.954711] mmc0: 4 bit data mode disabled
<6>[6.954925] mmc0: 8 bit data mode enabled
<6>[6.955078] mmc0: MMC clock 144000 -> 50000000 Hz, PCLK 96000000
<6>[6.955291] mmc0: Slot eject status = 0
<6>[6.955413] mmc0: Power save feature enable = 1
<6>[6.955566] mmc0: DM non-cached buffer at ffa0f000, dma_addr 0x0c
<6>[6.955780] mmc0: DM cmd busaddr 0x0c36e000, cmdptr busaddr 0x0c3
<6>[7.109436] mmc0: new high speed MMC card at address 0001
<6>[7.111297] mmcblk0: mmc0:0001 M4G2DE 2.10 GiB
~ #

To my best understanding it means that the eMMC is not necessarily fried.

4) Because I cannot boot into the system I tried to re-flash recovery (actually 4EXT) via fastboot and adb, but it fails with the error

. The same happened when I tried to flash the boot.img from a ROM.

5. I read about installing a RUU. well, I think that I have found a version that fits my phone but all the download links are broken and a web search didn't find the version that I (think that I) need elsewhere. Also, those are EXE file, that to my best of understanding requires the Android system to be booted up in order the installation process to work, which I cannot accomplish at this point.

General details of my phone as appear in the HBOOT screen:

Genreal details as received from running the commend

fastboot getvar all

in adb:

(bootloader) version: 0.5
(bootloader) version-bootloader: 0.98.0000
(bootloader) version-baseband: 38.03.02.15_M
(bootloader) version-cpld: None
(bootloader) version-microp: None
(bootloader) version-main: 1.28.401.1
(bootloader) serialno: HTXXXXXXXX
(bootloader) imei: XXXXXXXXXX
(bootloader) product: saga
(bootloader) platform: HBOOT-7230
(bootloader) modelid: PG88*****
(bootloader) cidnum: 11111111
(bootloader) battery-status: good
(bootloader) battery-voltage: 4196mV
(bootloader) partition-layout: Generic
(bootloader) security: off
(bootloader) build-mode: SHIP
(bootloader) boot-mode: FASTBOOT
(bootloader) commitno-bootloader: 361a7ba6
(bootloader) hbootpreupdate: 12
(bootloader) gencheckpt: 0
all: Done!
finished. total time: 0.033s

Additional notes:

1) I took caution not to pull the battery, I know that it can have very negative effects. When I had to, before pulling the battery I have used the Volume up and down + Power combination to restart the phone and pulled the battery in that 2-3 seconds window before it restarts. I also didn't reconnect the battery immediately but waited about a minute.

3) I formatted my memory card (8GB) to FAT32, just in case the file system is corrupt (I have backed up everything first). This doesn't seem to have an effect.

4) I didn't root or S-OFF the phone myself. At the time of buying it I wasn't even aware of all of this and didn't plan to replace ROMs, etc., so I don't have much information about how the S-OFF and Root were achieved, this is how the phone was provided to me.

I would appreciate any input and advice. Is it a faulty eMMC? Is there anything else that I can do (I am far from being an expert in this field)?

Thank you very much.