[Acer Iconia A500] Moscow Desire:
Ok, so here's a little info for you folks. Not sure if it helps you or not, but might clear up some of the mess that's been going on concerning bootloader versions VS Roms.

So you run one of the RUUs files. That's fine. Essentially you should be back on an HC bootloader running an HC rom. At this point, all your partitions should be back in place, especially if you used TD's tool.

While you are in HC, and everything is running fine, you should make a note of your current UID number. Because, after upgrading to ICS, your UID number will probably change. (the converted SBK number should be the same with both). But the RUUs seem to mostly want an HC UID number.

The issue, is when upgrading to ICS. If you do this the normal way via OTA, you should eventually get to ICS with a stock ICS bootloader. At this point, I would leave it alone for a few days, just to make sure it runs normally. Again, get your new UID number.

Now, here may be what you folks are missing.

With the introduction of ICS, Acer pulled a fast one on us. They introduced a little file called recovery-boot.p, and also a recovery.sh file.Both reside in /system (not sure exactly which folder for one of them, might be /system/etc or /system/bin.)

The issue, is that if you NVFlash V8 bootloader, and let's say Thor CWM 1.7.2 or 1.7.3, without deleting those aforementioned files, when you boot your tab, guess what? Hasta La Vista CWM, and mr android is on his back deader than a doornail. Not to mention you might screw up a partition or 2 along the way. And then it's back doing the whole thing again, sorta like groundhog day.

If you get Skrilax_CZ's bootloader running, then there's no real reason why you can't load a compatible CWM to flash roms.

Personally, I don't like the little 1-app-does-all. I prefer the old fashioned way. NVFlash from a command line. This way, you can see if there's errors coming up. Also, you may have better luck trying one of the older packages for the V3 or V4 bootloader. If you guys are interested, I can research my other drives in a day or so, and come up with one of the original packages. Am sure I saved it somewhere.

But if you get the V8 loaded, then you can boot it into fastboot mode. From here, you can fastboot a good CWM image. And at this point, I strongly advise CWM 1.7.2 or 1.7.3. After you fastboot it, boot immediately into CWM recovery. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, and do your wipes and formats and immediately install a custom rom. If you boot back into your stock rom, sianara..... This is why it's best to already have your custom rom.zip on your SD card.

Now, roms, kernels and bootloaders. The rom you choose to install, is pretty important. It needs to be recent, and designed for the ICS bootloader (V8). Using some of the earlier roms with kernels is asking for trouble. HC based roms WILL NOT run on an ICS bootloader. Remember that also, and vica-versa.

It's possible, however unlikely, that one of you may have unrecoverable corrupt data on your chipset. It has happened, but it's rare. Generally, you will find this when you can't get anything running. Period. Or in the case I know, the user could not migrate from HC to ICS. But only 1 or 2 people I know have had this. Oh, 3. I forgot Civato who totally cooked his internal memory (more than likely while inventing his own version of TWRP)

Wipes and formats. Again, I can't stress this enough. There have been issues using TWRP when it comes to wipes and formats. It seems, sometimes, things don't get fully wiped. So, as I always do with CWM, remember those versions I quoted), always

Wipe Data/factory reset

Wipe Cache

Wipe Dalvak

Wipe battery stats (optional)

Goto Mounts and Storage

Format System

Format Flexrom

As we say, be nice, wipe twice.....

Then install the custom rom (not a stock rom, remember the 2 recovery files?)

MD