[G2 and Desire Z Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ctomk1482:
Hello,

This will be a long read. Thanks in advance for your patience. I'm not skilled in android or mobile phones in general, so I'll try to be the most descriptive possible on this. :)

I have a HTC Desire Z phone which suddenly has ceased to work. I've checked a bunch of threads that list some steps to follow, but I've noticed that all the steps are for rooted devices, so I'm unsure about them. The amount of information found is overwhelming. :(

This phone is not under warranty. I've had it like for two months so far. Apparently, bought as new (boxed, etc) from a store remnant. So I cannot send it to service, etc.

What happened is as follows. 2 days ago I was doing like 3 or 4 simultaneous updates (apps like firefox, skype, google maps...that I remember) via wifi. Some ended, some were about to end I think. I left the phone unattended for a while, and when I came back, it had a black screen with a red triangle / exclamation icon. I never had similar problems before. Maybe a few restarts because it was unresponsive (which I assume it's normal for a smartphone nowadays).

After this, I removed the battery, put it back, and turned the phone on. It started as usual, but as soon as it connected to the net, when the small synchronizing icon (circling arrow) appeared at the top of the screen, it froze. So I repeated the battery thing and as soon as it started, deactivated the synchronization, the wifi and the data connection.

I don't exactly remember if I was able to deactivate all the three, but the phone froze again. Only got a white screen with the HTC logo in the next boot. The usual "quietly brilliant"-or something message never appeared. Stuck forever. Repeated a few times and same thing.

So I entered the "Volume Down + Power Menu", and hit Factory Reset. It seemed to restart, showed a black screen with a circling green + phone icon and an animated progress bar below (not showing progress, just animating), and after a while the screen went totally black. Some seconds later, the phone vibrated 7 times. And it still does this if I repeat the factory reset operation.

BTW, I don't understand why at the right-end of the progress bar, there's a small micro-sd icon, like if the phone were trying to read or write anything from/to the sd card (a factory reset should not need anything external, IMO). Anyway, this process behaves exactly with or without an sd card in the slot. :rolleyes:

The phone does not start after this vibration-thing. I have to remove the battery, wait some seconds and put it back. After this, it starts and immediately shows the previous animation and does the vibration thing, like if it was in a Factory Reset "loop" (quoted because I have to totally turn it off for it to happen again).

-I assume that the vibration is some sort of error code, but I've not found any source for this, which is kinda stupid.

To break that "loop", I have to start the phone again, with the Volume Down thing, to get the HBOOT menu:

VISION PVT SHIP [B]S-OFF[/B]
HBOOT-0.85.0013
MICROP-0424
RADIO-26.10.04.03_M
eMMC-boot
Apr 11 2011,23:36:27

FASTBOOT
RECOVERY
FACTORY RESET
SIMLOCK
IMAGE CRC

After some searches, I noticed that the "S-OFF" part might be an indication that the phone is rooted. At this point, I'm not sure. However, I had (i.e., several days ago) tried to copy/create some file in the filesystem using either the ADB Shell, or a shell application. That was not possible. Isn't this a good indication that the phone was not booting as root?

BTW, phone is not visible through "adb devices". But "fastboot devices" lists it OK.

A command like "fastboot flash recovery ..." ends with

FAILED (remote: not allowed)

This gives me the idea that the firmware memory (or whatever is named) is read-only at this time (?), so what the "S-OFF" means then?

Anyway...

That happened on day 1 after the problem. Then I found this thread:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2474781

And went through the RUU route, accordingly.

Downloaded the file RUU_Vision_Gingerbread_S_HTC_WWE_2.42.405.3_Radio_12.56.60.25_26.10.04.03_M_release_224299_signed.exe from shipped-roms.com, and ran it.

That worked. The OS was reinstalled and the phone was able to boot as factory default.

Side note: This RUU thing actually did a subtle downgrade. The previous installed version was 2.42.405.4, according to the program.

So I began to set up the phone, configured an APN, connected to the Internet, went to the Market and downloaded one required app. It installed successfully, but as soon as I tried to execute it, the phone froze and had to remove the battery to turn it on again. And it went back to the original problem, stuck at boot, white screen + HTC logo. Any subsequent RUU application execution gets hung in the "Reboot to bootloader..." part. Nothing starts to be copied. The phone (in the FASTBOOT USB menu) is also frozen after this. :crying:

I also tried a previous RUU: RUU_Vision_Gingerbread_S_HTC_WWE_2.42.405.2_Radio_12.56.60.25_26.10.04.03_M_release_199043_signed.exe from the same source. Same behavior.

I have no idea about what happened. The phone was running again, with working phone network, wifi, gps, sd filesystem, etc. :confused:

Oh, almost forgot it. Before finding the RUU solution, I tried putting an

official Gingerbread firmware

in the PC10IMG.zip file, in the root of the SD. The file was parsed OK by the phone, but when I proceeded with the update, it got stuck in the first item (updating "boot" or so - I don't remember). I think this is because the "not allowed" condition I previously got with the fastboot application.

OK. These are some details I got AFTER running some fastboot commands in the phone, now that it's boot stuck again.

First of all, this is my current HBOOT menu header:

VISION PVT SHIP S-OFF
HBOOT-0.85.0013
MICROP-042[B]5[/B]
RADIO-26.10.04.03_M
eMMC-boot
Apr 11 2011,23:36:27

>fastboot devices

SH115RT01882 fastboot

>fastboot oem boot

(bootloader) setup_tag addr=0xA0000100 cmdline add=0x8D0878FC
(bootloader) TAG:Ramdisk OK
(bootloader) TAG:smi ok, size = 0
(bootloader) TAG:hwid 0x0
(bootloader) TAG:skuid 0x25209
(bootloader) TAG:hero panel = 0xF
(bootloader) TAG:engineerid = 0x4
(bootloader) MCP dual-die
(bootloader) MCP dual-die
(bootloader) TAG:mono-die = 0x0
(bootloader) Device CID is super CID
(bootloader) CID is super CID
(bootloader) Backup CID is empty
(bootloader) setting->cid::[B]11111111[/B]
(bootloader) serial number: SH115RT01882
(bootloader) commandline from head: no_console_suspend=1
(bootloader) command line length =493
(bootloader) active commandline: board_vision.disable_uart2=0 board_visio
(bootloader) n.usb_h2w_sw=0 board_vision.disable_sdcard=0 diag.enabled=0
(bootloader) board_vision.debug_uart=0 smisize=0 userdata_sel=0 androidbo
(bootloader) ot.emmc=true androidboot.baseband=26.10.04.03_M androidboot
(bootloader) .cid=11111111 androidboot.batt_poweron=good_battery androidb
(bootloader) oot.carrier=ALL androidboot.mid=PC10***** androidboot.keycap
(bootloader) s=qwerty androidboot.mode=normal androidboot.serialno=SH115R
(bootloader) T01882 androidboot.bootloader=0.85.0013 zygote_oneshot=off k
(bootloader) memleak=off no_console_suspend=1
(bootloader) aARM_Partion[0].name=misc
(bootloader) aARM_Partion[1].name=recovery
(bootloader) aARM_Partion[2].name=boot
(bootloader) aARM_Partion[3].name=system
(bootloader) aARM_Partion[4].name=cache
(bootloader) aARM_Partion[5].name=userdata
(bootloader) aARM_Partion[6].name=devlog
(bootloader) aARM_Partion[7].name=pdata
(bootloader) partition number=8
(bootloader) Valid partition num=8
(bootloader) jump_to_kernel: machine_id(2245), tags_addr(0x4000100), kern
(bootloader) el_addr(0x4008000)
(bootloader) -------------------hboot boot time:125342 msec
FAILED (status read failed (Too many links))
finished. total time: 7.101s

After this, the phone is hung in the white screen / HTC logo part.

>fastboot getvar all

(bootloader) version: 0.5
(bootloader) version-bootloader: 0.85.0013
(bootloader) version-baseband: 26.10.04.03_M
(bootloader) version-cpld: None
(bootloader) version-microp: 0425
(bootloader) version-main: 2.42.405.3
(bootloader) serialno: SH115RT01882
(bootloader) imei: 320864213579134
(bootloader) product: vision
(bootloader) platform: HBOOT-7230
(bootloader) modelid: [B]PC10*****[/B]
(bootloader) cidnum: [B]11111111[/B]
(bootloader) battery-status: good
(bootloader) battery-voltage: 4133mV
(bootloader) partition-layout: Generic
(bootloader) security: off
(bootloader) build-mode: SHIP
(bootloader) boot-mode: FASTBOOT
(bootloader) commitno-bootloader: 81c588a7
(bootloader) hbootpreupdate: 11
(bootloader) gencheckpt: 0
all: Done!
finished. total time: 0.008s

See that kinda fake modelid and cidnum? I certainly have no idea about what do they mean, but isn't that a proof that the phone is rooted?

>fastboot oem list_partition_emmc

(bootloader) index, type, start, num
(bootloader) 0, 0x4D, 0x1, 0x3E8
(bootloader) 1, 0x45, 0x3E9, 0x80
(bootloader) 2, 0x46, 0x469, 0x2328
(bootloader) 3, 0x5, 0x2791, 0x43186E
OKAY [ 0.016s]
finished. total time: 0.016s

>fastboot oem check_emmc_mid

(bootloader) Manufacturer ID, MID=15
(bootloader) eMMC should be samsung
OKAY [ 0.008s]
finished. total time: 0.009s

>fastboot -w

erasing 'userdata'...
FAILED (remote: not allowed)
finished. total time: 0.001s

Short question. Any ideas? :fingers-crossed:

Thanks again for your help!