[MDA, XDA, 1010 Software Upgrading] rhodwyn:
Unlocking Quest

Here's my quest to unlock my T-Mobile PPCPE. I think some of this information might be useful to anyone confused about getting this

done.

First I called TMobile to request the unlock code. Since my account was up to date I figured no big deal right? WRong. My IMEI (or TMFT) number was not in their database so they could not give me an unlock code so they said. They told me to call the manufacturer of the device which they said was Microsoft. Knowing full well this was crap I called anyway.

The support guy got a good laugh; MS does not make devices

like this, they only provide the OS. He recommended I call Siemens.

So I did. Real nice guy named Jack had a good laugh as well. Not only could Siemens not tell me who really made my device (a third party made them for T-Mobile) but even if they had unlock codes they could not provide them because of contracts with TMobile. So I go back to TMobile.

The support people felt really bad about the run around and escalated really high up the chain (or so they said). AFter 48 hours I decided to take my own course. Having had good luck unlocking a Treo 600 through 'alternative means' I figured time to tackle the Pocket PC Phone Edition.

This was MUCH different and much harder to figure out.

After a good 12 hours and a whole slew of reading I finally figured out some stuff. Most of this may seem a no-brainer to some of the more educated XDA people out there but for us newbies maybe it will help.

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The PDA side of the ppcpe and the radio/phone/gsm side are two totally different animals (not a surprise to some). When you refer to the 'operating system' you're talking about the ROM

like the XDA Developers special edition or any of the ROMs from the ROM kitchen at http://lumpistefans.dyndns.org/. The Radio or RSU (for Radio Stack UPgrade) is totally separate from this. The other variable is the bootloader version (Wallaby in my case).

Now my goal was just to use the XDAUnlock program. When I ran the program right from the defaults I got 'error getting unlock code.' All the posts I read said put on the special edition rom and you'll be fine but that did not do the trick. Still got the same error message.

Here's what I started out with:

ROM: 4.01.16 ENG

Radio: 6.25.02

Wallaby booatloader: 5.22

What finally worked:

Radio: 6.24.00

ROM: 3.17.03 ENG (xda special edition)

then upgraded bacdk to 4.01.16 ENG

Wallaby boot loader 5.15

How I did it

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I meandered my way through this to eventual success and since the dratted device now works fine I'm leery about putting it all back to the old way and doing it all over again. Therefore use this process as a guide only, not a definitive instruction set. Also I walked through this as a troubleshooting exercise so some steps may not have been necessary. I eventually succeeded but maybe went the long way around to do it.

References

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- Bootloader utilities: Get to this by holding down the power button and pressing soft reset. You may have to hit the contacts button to get into the menu if you don't see it right away (like if you see a simple GSM OK message at the bottom of the bootloader display.

- Cold boot: the reset swtich on the right side bottom of the device with a picture of a red battery with an \ through it. This disconnects the batter from the mainboard and trashes all the data on the device except the Operating System in ROM.

What I grabbed

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- XDATools

- XDARit

- ActiveSync (I used 3.7.1) and connection by USB cable

- Wallaby bootlolader version 5.15 files

- XDA Developers Special Edition ROM

- RSU 6.24.00 files

- XDAUnlock.exe

- SD Card (mine is 128 MB but I think as long as it's bigger than 64MB or your current memory in the device you're OK)

- pnewbootflash_40116.exe

All of these files are available here on xda-developers.com, just

search for them.

First back up everything. Not just using the sda backup tool, from the boot loader. You can do the SDA backup if you want, consider it backing up your data. You can also do the ActiveSync backup if you want to save your data. In my case all my data is stored in Domino so I don't

give a hoot about the data on the device. Your mileage may vary!

Second I'm doing ALL of this with no SIM chip in the device. THis may or may not be necessary.

Stick your SD card into the PDA. If it complains about wanting to format it go ahead and let it format the card unless you have stuff on it you want. I'd recommend dropping anything you want from the card onto safe media and just working with it as a blank the rest of the way through because it's easier to just wipe the card in between some steps.

Go to the bootloader utilities. Hit Contacts button and you'll get the boot loader option stuff. If the bootloader utilities you get to right away takes you to a menu with things like Boot+CE-->SD then you don't have to worry about hitting the contacts button. You only need Contacts button

if when you get to the bootloader screen you see nothing more than

some nice colors, the bootloader version and "GSM OK" message.

Take the Boot+CE-->SD option to back everything up. This will take a few minutes.

Once it's done pull the SD out ofthe ppcpe and stick it into your SD card reader.

Bring up xdarit and chose your removeable device.

If you have more than one MMC slot select the different ones until you get one that says 'wallaby' in the hex codes at the bottom of the XDARit screen. You'll be writing out two files, the first is the NB0 file (which is the bootloader) and the second is the NB1 file (which is the OS or ROM). Name these something like original.nb0 and 1.

Wipe the SD card (format FAT).

Stick the SD card back into the pda and soft reset, then cradle it.

Go to a DOS prompt and CD to where you put 'pnewbootflash_40116.exe.'

Type 'pnewbootflash_40116 nbl515.nb0' to write the wallaby 5.15 boot loader to the device. If when you downloaded the 5.15 bootloader you called it something else (like 'wallaby_boot_loader_V5.15.nb0'

you should of course use that name instead!

The output looks like this:

D:\XDAtools\binaries>pnewbootloader_40116 bl515.nb0

Copying D:\XDAtools\binaries\itsutils.dll to WCE:\windows\itsutils.dll

in FindFlashInfoOffset

protection found at 8c0d60f8

result: 00000000 00000000

Now..why did I downgrade the bootloader? At this stage I'm troubleshooting why I get the 'error getting unlock code' message running XDAUnlock. I've got three variables I know of, bootloader, ROM and Radio Stack. I chose to start with the bootloader because

some posts out there say boot loaders 5.17 and higher have some checksum that keeps certain ROMS from working properly. Perhaps if I'd started with the radio stack I'd have been done right away and saved a few hours but all the posts about possible device destruction made me start with the bootloader! Again, your results may vary!

Next I changed the ROM to the XDA Developers special edtion.

Make sure the SD card is in the PDA and cradle it.

Run OSIMagetool and load the ROM file in the first box, chose SD Card in the second box.

If you downloaded the special edition ROM you might

have some luck using the Installer that comes with it but apparently that

does not work with ActiveSync 3.7.1. I got messages that said it could not access the device or no connection etc. Instead I used OSImageTool to load the NK.NBF file included in the distribution. Note that to get to this file you DO have to unzip the EXE file you download!

Once complete pull the pda out of the cradle.

Hold power+soft reset to get the boot loader menu. This should show up as 5.15 now. It will automatically detect that the SD card contains a ROM that can be flashed to the device. If for some reason it does not automatically detect this maybe you have to hit Contacts. I did not have

to do that, it just told me to hit Action to download the ROM.

Hit Action button (aka the jog button) to write it to the device. This will take a few minutes, go grab a beer or two or three. I took the safe route and connected power to the device while writing the flash.

Once it's finished cold boot the device. I waited 2-3 minutes before re-engaging the battery.

Here's a gotcha. On the right side of the SIM there is a little switch. If the rubber door for the sim is not totally closed you can't get the device to boot. This switch is real small so it's very possible to miss it. You can see it fine if you take the back off the device (which I determined from a post here that told you how to get the battery out).

When it boots you should have the 5.15 wallaby booting the xda special edition. Follow the instructions to calibrate the screen and you're ready to move on.

Now if the radio is 6.25.02 xdaunlock won't work, it just generates the 'error getting unlock code' message. You have to downgrade the radio to have this work.

There's lots of posts around here that say don't screw with the radio because if it errors you've got a fried device. I imagine this is true so balance how bad you want to unlock the device against the possibility of totally frying the device. I've done two radio upgrades in my life on the PPCPE, both were OK but again, caution is advised.

Grab the 6.24 radio zip and unzip into a folder on your computer. Use activesync to copy the files to \windows on the device.

Execute the rsupdate.exe program to reprogram the radio to 6.24. WHen completed soft reset the device and go into start-settings-system-device info to make sure you're at 6.24 radio vesion.

Copy the xdaunlock.exe to the device and execute. It should say 'you're device appears to be SIM Locked, would you like to remedy this?" click Yes to unlock the device.

Now the device is unlocked. You can change the ROM to WM2003 now if you want (which I did). I imagine you can re-upgrade your bootloader

and radio stack if you want but I'm leaving well enough alone for now!