[Miscellaneous Android Development] zeroxia:
Thanks for confirmation.

There seems to be some discussion on the MTK's USB COM port driver installation issue. After reading this thread, I also searched some Chinese forums to find this post:

http://bbs.hiapk.com/thread-4671837-1-1.html

The actual content cannot be viewed unless you post a reply. I'd like to share my steps performed to install the driver and the custom recovery as this Chinese post hints:

My system is: Windows 7 X64 with SP1.

Use bgcngm's driver: MT6589 USB VCOM drivers.7z

Run "MT6589 USB VCOM drivers.7z\installdrv.exe", and follow the on screen process. For this step to complete, you need to grant administrator privilege, and accept to install the driver though it is not signed (by Microsoft?).

Connect the V987 phone with Micro USB data cable to the PC, a CD-ROM will be mounted automatically, and install the .MSI driver file. I think the only driver needed could be the one at step 2, but for completeness, I did this as well. As well, this needs administrator privilege.

Disconnects the phone, and shutdown the phone, and pull out the battery.

With the battery removed, connect the phone with Micro USB cable to the PC, the system tray will display some notificaton saying the MTK VCOM is successfully installed.

If you have kept a "Device Manager" window open (Win+R, "devmgmt.msc" to launch it), the window will show an entry named "MediaTek DA USB VCOM Port" under the "Ports (COM & LPT)" category. But it just disappears shortly after, and the system notifies that the device is removed. Yes, it just automatically removed itself. It turns out this is expected normal phenomenon. Quite strange though....

Disconnect the phone from the PC, and STILL keep the battery removed, but PRESS AND HOLD the VOLUME UP hardware key, and connect the phone to the PC once again. This time another "device installation" will be seen on the PC. Then like before a "device removed" event automatically happened.

Now it's time to use the "SP Flash Toool" from the file: "SP Flash Tool v3.1308.0.125.7z", which like the VCOM USB driver, is also downloaded from bgcngm's MT65xx Tools 4shared folder. Luanch this program:

SP Flash Tool v3.1308.0.125.7z\Flash_tool.exe

And don't change anything. As a side note, this tool can run without administrator privilege.

Another file from the 4share folder, the CWM custom recovery:

V987 CWM Recovery V6.0.3.0.7z

Extract it in your PC. And locate this file:

V987 CWM Recovery V6.0.3.0.7z\MT6589_Android_scatter_emmc.txt

Go back to the SP Flash Tool, click "Scatter-loading" button on the right side, and locate the ".txt" file prepared at step 8.

Press F9, confirm the warning on your partial flashing, then the Flash Tool waits for the phone to be connected.

STILL KEEP THE BATTERY REMOVED. Just connect the phone to the PC. The flashing will start automatically. It took a quite short while (less than 1 second) to complete the recovery-only flashing.

After a small dialog with a green circle is displayed in the PC, disconnect the phone, and you're done. Install the battery. Press and hold the VOLUME UP key, then press and hold the POWER key. The phone will turn on and enter the CWM recovery.

I don't know the difference with the battery installed or not when flashing, just to share my experience. :p

But I have a problem with this "CWM-based recovery v6.0.3.0":

Before flashing some other ROM, I want the stock ROM be backed up for safety. So I entered the custom recovery, and wiped the data (do the "factory reset").

Then I chose the backup option. The console log showed "cannot mount /data" and the backup process was interrupted.

After that I rebooted the phone and entered the stock system, then reboot again into the custom recovery, this time the backup completed without error.

I think this might be improved to let the user wipe data and do the backup (no /data needs to backed up, or it could just be empty?), so as to only keep a clean stock ROM for safekeeping.