[Desire HD Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dumbdowntalktalk:
Up until yesterday I had a great little HTC Desire HD, A9191 with rooted gingerbread 2.3.5, an unlocked bootloader (from htcdev), S-ON - and everything in my garden was rosy... Then I tried to get too clever and pushed a new hosts file to /system/etc while I had su privileges.

This was a big file (540K) which I had been using quite happily on Windows to keep adware at bay. However, I now think it caused the phone to fail because the first time I tried to boot up after the push, it started looping round the boot sequence indefinitely. I am wondering if the IP for localhost, being 127.0.0.1, is incompatible with linux...? Anyway, that's a job for tomorrow because before I can think about draining the swamp there are some "alligators" to deal with...

While this continuous re-booting was going on I found I could still do "adb shell" and run "su" but all my attempts to restore hosts to the original file were futile because at this point the file system was "read-only" even for root. Then I made my biggest error which was to attempt "RECOVERY" from the boot menu...... ( I think my previous attempt to create a recovery file failed and I must have just forgotten to attend to it.)

The boot loader still responds and I am now looking at the boot screen which says:

=============================================

*** UNLOCKED ***

ACE PVT SHIP S-ON RL

HBOOT-2.00.0029

MICROP-0438

RADIO-26.14.04.28_M (this is the original factory-shipped version for my phone)

eMMC-boot

Dec 22 2011, 14:28:19

HBOOT

<VOL UP> to previous item

<VOL DOWN> to next item

<POWER> to select item

FASTBOOT

RECOVERY

FACTORY RESET

SIMLOCK

IMAGE CRC

==============================================

Here's what happens with these various options:

1. Normal boot ends with "Sorry! Process system is not responding" and two buttons "Force close" and "Wait" - but in reality the phone is simply hung...

2. FASTBOOT ends with a phone gif and a red triangle / exclamation mark.

3. RECOVERY also ends with a phone gif and a red triangle / exclamation mark.

4. FACTORY RESET runs a black/white barber pole and sd card symbol for 2 minutes, then reboots as far as "quietly brilliant" but this then ends up the same as 1. above.

5. SIMLOCK produces this output:

FAT32 init OK

Open MCCMNC file fail

Open CID file fail

Process done, reboot device?

<VOL UP> Yes

6. IMAGE CRC produces this output:

osbl:	0x3AA5FD29

amss:	0xD791CCA8

hboot:	0xFB10D632

boot:	0x8446CCFD

recovery:	0x0x88F60913

system:	0x898C2200

When I put an sd card in the slot and press and hold the power button with HBOOT highlighted it produces this:

SD checking...

Loading...[PD98DIAG.zip]

No image!

Loading...[PD98DIAG.nbh]

No image or wrong image!

Loading...[PD98IMG.zip]

No image!

Loading...[PD98IMG.nbh

No image or wrong image!

So am I right in thinking that it's not quite dead yet and still recoverable? I have made a few attempts to position ROM files in the root of the sd card, but so far without success.

Could someone please tell me (assuming it's not bricked yet) what file(s) I need to put on the sd card to stand any chance of recovering. Previously I had downloaded the nearest "stock rom" to the phone's original but this came as a .exe which just compounded my confusion as to what needs to be done.

Here's hoping...

Happy New Year to all.