[Verizon HTC One (M8)] bdroidcandoo:
By the title, you can assume the situation is not very pretty and this poor individual needs some help. You would be correct in your assessment. This was me yesterday, freaking out after the new OTA update crippled my device and made me fear the worst (bricking). As a new Rom developer/flasher, I certainly worry about bricking my device, but have luckily not…yet. I certainly won’t deny the amount of tinkering that I do with my phone and flashing custom Roms, which might have assisted in my near meltdown, however, I thought it may be a good idea to share this experience (issue + solution) with the rest of the community, to hopefully save someone long periods of stress and research.

Note: I am only assuming the OTA is what caused the problem, but this could be incorrect, feel free to correct me.

Key Factors:

Custom Recovery: TWRP

Custom Rom (at the time of meltdown): Google Play Edition

Device: Verizon HTC One m8

OTA update ran.

Decided I wanted to go back to something closer to Sense and noticed that the ViperOne rom was getting some awesome reviews.

Downloaded Rom

Attempted to go into Recovery, but was greeted by the following error message:

HBoot

Model ID incorrect

Update failed

Press power to reboot

Downloaded Flashify and was able to get into recovery.

I knew I would need to deal with this error eventually, but thought maybe flashing the new Rom would assist in that area.

Flashed ViperOne rom, flash failed.

I swiped to unlock and the phone rebooted…

Then the real fun began.

My phone would boot to HTC logo with the read development disclaimer at the bottom:

“This build is for development purposes only. Do not distribute outside of HTC without HTC’s written permission. Failure to comply may lead to legal action.”

I freaked out for a bit, researched a ton and finally began to put the bits and pieces together:

At this screen it is possible to reboot, but then you will just boot into Hboot error, so pretty pointless (from what I know, feel free to chime in If you know of a way to get into recovery/fastboot from here).

I downloaded the latest version of TWRP

While on the HTC One screen, I plugged my phone into the computer and entered: adb devices.

At first, the command yielded no results, but after about 3 minutes, the device was recognized, but offline.

After 4 minutes, the device was recognize and looked to be available.

I then issued the following command:

Adb reboot bootloader

Success! This booted me into the fastboot usb method, which gave me a huge glimpse of hope.

Next, I ran the command to reflash the custom recovery:

Fastboot flash recovery [insert recovery file name here].

I received a successful message flash, however, after a reboot, I experienced the same problem as before.

I attempted to boot into recovery from the menu UI, but the option was not available. The journey continues:

I attempted the steps outlined above and then flashed the TWRP recovery image to boot instead of as recovery:

Fastboot flash boot [insert recovery file name here].

reboot-bootloader

This time, I was able to select “Recovery”, and booted into TWRP.

I then installed the GPE Rom again.

After the GPE rom installed, I rebooted into TWRP and checked to see if my restores were available, and luckily enough they were still in the same place (phew!).

This little article will hopefully help someone, as all the information I found for this issue was scattered throughout the web and I was luckily able to piece it together for my specific issue.

Ultimately, typing the ADB and Fastboot by themselves and reading through the commands in the CMD prompt, helped me figure out the commands needed to be successful in my endevours.

:cowboy: