[Motorola Droid 3] xjas:
Hey guys, having a big problem here. Pretty much what the title says. I got my new (used) XT862 this morning, it had been reset to a fresh rom and wasn't rooted. I was so excited to finally get it that I started modding straight away.

First of all, I forgot to jot down the exact version number of the rom. I know already this was really stupid, but I can't do anything about it now... It was 2.3.4... I'm guessing it might have been the original 890? Is there any way to find this out from the recovery menu?

I'll try to describe what I did as completely as possible, I don't know if something might have gone wrong during the process or what.

First I installed Safestrap 3.05 from this link, not realizing that I had to have root (duh). It seemed to install fine, then when I ran it I got the standard "stopped responding" error with the "force close" button.

I then rooted it using Motofail, first I forgot to switch to root on my PC and it stopped at "daemon started successfully" so I hit CTRL+C until it dumped me back to the command line. Then I changed users on my desktop with su, ran it again and it worked perfectly, the superuser app on the phone showed up and it was operating normally.

(Here's what happened the first time I ran Motofail from my non-root user acct, I had to hit CTRL+C twice, once after "daemon started successfully, once after "waiting for phone to reboot" at which I rebooted the phone manually. Was still booting fine at this point.)

[*]
[*] Motofail: Universal Motorola Gingerbread Root Exploit (Linux version)
[*] by Dan Rosenberg (@djrbliss)
[*]
[*] Tested on Droid 3, Droid Bionic, Droid RAZR, and Droid 4
[*]
[*] Before continuing, ensure USB debugging is enabled and that your phone
[*] is connected via USB.
[*]
[*] Press enter to root your phone...
[*]
[*] Waiting for device...
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
^Cerror: protocol fault (no status)
[*] Device found.
[*] Deploying payload...
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
error: insufficient permissions for device
error: insufficient permissions for device
[*] Owning phone...
error: insufficient permissions for device
[*] Rebooting device...
error: insufficient permissions for device
[*] Waiting for phone to reboot.
^C

After rooting it was still booting fine so I think the problem was not there. Once everything was finished and I was back at the home screen I re-ran Safestrap which appeared to be running normally. I was planning to install Minimoto but I ran "create recovery image" first which I figured couldn't hurt. Well, Safestrap worked for a minute, then crashed (the "not responding - force close" error screen came up) and trying to run it again just crashed it immediately.

I did nothing else, just rebooted the phone not realizing the crash had apparently messed up my bootloader? Now I just get a boot loop, it plays the little Droid animation over and over again.

When I boot into the menu with M+power I don't get a Safestrap menu, and running "recovery" from there just gives me a screen with an /!\ icon and the Android character. I get the same screen if I try to boot with X+power.

I've tried to download the fast unbrick rom from here but neither of the links work... The old Dropbox link is long gone and the new Mediafire mirror says its allotment of 10 free downloads per week has been exceeded... infuriating!

Can anyone give me some advice or steer me in the right direction? I was so excited to get my new phone, I'll be heartbroken if I've managed to brick it for good! I don't want to do anymore damage without advice... please help?

********** // **********

EDIT: I found a mirror for fast/easy unbrick and that worked, so I'm now back to the stock 890 rom with functional bootloader and am much relieved. Two questions though:

1 - Can anyone shed some light on what went wrong during the safestrap process that bricked the phone? Was the fact that I tried to install it before I rooted it the cause?

2 - There is still a /safestrap directory on my internal storage (containing only the files "active_slot" and "translate"), should I delete this? Are there other bits of Safestrap left behind that I should get rid of too?

I will eventually try again as I'd really like to run Minimoto on this thing but I want to understand what I did wrong first.

Any info appreciated, thanks!