[G2 and Desire Z Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Brianfit:
I need an Obi-wan here. I'm a noob -- though I've gotten a solid four day education

hacking at this problem.

My wife's Android Desire Z - Stock ROM, S-ON, got stuck looping with a failed

android.process.acore message and after trying a cache clear that didn't help

I set out to factory reset it. Figured the nuclear option would be dead simple. Nope.

Factory Reset from the Hboot menu simply froze the phone

at the HTC menu for an hour. Not good.

From there dozens of resets and reboots and fastboots would sometimes successfully boot

to my wife's setup (so nothing was reset at all), only to get stuck in the acore loop again.

I was once quick enough to put it into

airplane mode and that stopped the error message loops. YAY! I could try a reset

via software! But when I attempted

Settings > SD & phone storage > Factory data reset it rebooted to HTC screen, Vodafone

screen, HTC screen, vodafone screen. ANOTHER loop.

OK, next try was to flash the ROM with an original shipped version.

Couple forums in Dutch said the shipped ROM for the Vodafone Desire z in NL was Bravo/Froyo World Wide English

so I located this file:

RUU_Bravo_Froyo_HTC_WWE_2.29.405.2_Radio_32.49.00.32U_5.11.05.27_release_151783_

signed.exe

and attempted reset by running that on a pc.

But the USB connection failed after the unit reset: Error 171, Error 170.

Tried installing HTC Sync AND the Universal boot drivers

and the Android Booloader Driver, as per the helpful advice from Bob Denny at Phandroid. (As a noob, I can't post links here, sorry)

And yep, I disabled anti-virus, had a fully charged phone (I'm hoping you get

the picture here -- I've done my due dilligence and googling before asking for help.) but

nada. RUU rebooted the phone, waited for the bootoader, and either the phone never pings the USB

port to say it's there or the PC doesn't see it.

FINE. I can put a PC10IMG.ZIP on the SD card and dispense with the frustration of messing with windows, right? Well, no.

I extracted ROM.ZIP from the RUU renamed it PC10IMG.ZIP and slapped it in the root

directory of the SD card. I booted to Hboot with the volume down and power buttons, chose

Fastboot and watched the the Zip load (blue verticle progress bar upper right of screen),

check it (brown progress bar upper right), then NOTHING -- back to the Hboot menu.

No error message, and no invitation to

update. Reboot takes me back to screen loop. Normal power-on does the same.

Further searches make me question if this is the right shipped ROM.

The RUU reports that I'm running version 2.42.161.22

(of what? Vision Gingerbread?) and the Bravo/Froyo WWE Rom reported itself to be version 1.59 something.

As this is an S-ON phone, I know I can't roll back to earlier ROMS, and can only install

the exact version as shipped.

So the questions I THINK I need answered:

1. Does anyone know for certain, or know where I can find out, which ROM

shipped with the Vodafone NL Desire-Z in 2010? I can get Kernel source for it at the HTCDev site,

but I see no compiled ROM there -- anything I can do with kernel source?

2. Anyone know where can I get the right PC10IMG.ZIP file to flash the unit from the SD Card? (I tried Shipped-Roms.com and

dozens of google permutations)

3. Is my methodology for flashing the SD Card right or is there anything in the

description above that lends anyone to believe my problem or solution is anything

other than the one I'm obsessing over?

Any help deeply appreciated.

Info from Hboot screen:

VISION PVT SHIP S-ON

HBOOT-0.05.0013

MICROP-0425

RADIO-26.10.51.26

eMMC-BOOT

Apr 11 2011, 23:36:27

Image CRC:

osbl: 0x1B4C7A4C

amss: 0xEF10821B

hboot: 0xCCCC4C36

recovery: 0x9627D8E8

system: 0xB6CE69CE

Please tell me I'm a stupid Noob and I've missed something so obvious I'll leave a

facepalm scar on my forehead, then tell me what it is so I can fix this dang phone and

get my life back. I'd be one appreciative noob.

-b