[HTC U12+ ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other Develo] i5lee8bit:
Hey guys, I finally made the jump to Pie. But not after a really weird problem that I'm not sure how I fixed, but now it's doing it again, ugh. Anybody have any suggestions to wtf is going on with this?

Before upgrading to Pie, I RUU'ed my device (US Unlocked) with the official latest RUU.exe, version 1.30.617.2. At this point, every single partition on both slots should be stock, right? Then, I OTA'ed up to 2.51.617.1. Everything seemed fine. Then did a factory reset (from within Android OS) - and this is where everything went to crap. It hung on the HTC (powered by Android) splash screen forever. Literally left it for over an hour and no dice. After doing dozens of forced reboots, and my fingers starting to blister trying to force reboot / get the damn phone to boot into bootloader/download mode (and me cursing the "buttons" again for the first time in months), it still wouldn't boot. I also tried booting to Recovery (again, this should have been fully stock right?), and it would do the same exact thing - just hang at the splash screen. I even installed the full 2.51.617.1 RUU.zip via SD card method, which was 100% successful, but it STILL wouldn't boot (stuck on splash screen, same thing)!! I'm not sure how I got it fixed, but I started fastboot flashing the stock boot.img and system.img (extracted from the 2.51.617.1 RUU.zip) to both slots - eventually it got past the splash screen, and I got a short message about the phone encrypting, then finally the Welcome screen.

Finally, with a fresh factory reset US Unlocked stock Pie, I got the phone fully set up with newest Magisk, LeeDroid 1.3, and Kirisakura kernel, and it was great (no TWRP involved in any capacity at all).

Now, less than 24 hours later, it looks like I got myself into the same pickle. I accidentally hit the option to reboot to Recovery (from APM), and it's doing the same damn thing. It's just stuck on the HTC powered by android splash screen.

It seems like anything that tells the phone to do any functions in Recovery is causing it to do this? First time, it was the factory reset (from a fully stock setup too!) - factory reset pretty much invokes some recovery commands, right? But then, simply selecting the option to reboot to Recovery is causing the same problem, wtf? I'd hate to even ask anyone else to test this, but anybody have any suggestions on how to fix it, what's causing it, etc? The fact that it even happened from a freshly RUU'ed, fully stock setup seems crazy to me. I thought recovery was now in the boot partition, so shouldn't flashing the stock boot.img be enough?

BTW, my phone is still basically soft bricked right now, stuck on this damn splash screen. I really don't want to RUU.zip again (considering it didn't even help last time when it was already full stock, and I just spent the whole day getting the phone set back up exactly the way I like), and I tried fastboot flashing the stock boot.img and system.img, but it's not working this time. Is attempting to reboot into recovery really enough to break the phone (or cause this weird kind of boot state where it just refuses to boot to the OS)? Any possibility this has to do with the reason HTC pulled the Pie update for so long in the first place? Wtf!! Any help would be appreciated... =(

edit: not sure if it's relevant at all, but I did have permanently flashed TWRP when I was still on Oreo - but I wouldn't think it would matter, since I did a full RUU of stock Oreo, then OTA'd to Pie. Are there some partitions that are left untouched perhaps even by RUU that may be causing this? I would think I would have heard more people having this problem though. Argg..

edit2: ok, after dozens of forced reboots again (to get into download mode, simply try booting again, power off for a while, etc) and reflashing stock boot.img and system.img to both slots, and spending over an hour on that same splash screen (also trying leaving the phone off for several minutes before turning on again), the phone decided to boot back up again. it just so happened i flashed back the magisk_patched boot.img before the attempt that happened to successfully boot, so that tells me i didn't even need the stock boot.img to get it to boot back up. i also just flashed kirisakura and rebooted, everything worked just fine. it's like nothing ever happened (other than reverting my boot.img back to post-magisk but pre-kirisakura). Again, since Pie, TWRP has not been involved in any way shape or form.

TL;DR - i now fear accidentally trying to boot into Recovery mode from now on because it seems to temporarily brick my phone for hours, and I'm not entirely sure how to actually recover from it. This first happened when on fully stock, freshly RUU'ed and OTA'd to Pie, and only seemed to start happening on Pie. I never had the issue on Oreo (I had TWRP perma-flashed on Oreo, but before I had TWRP or after RUU'ing I could still boot to factory recovery and/or factory reset). Besides any attempt to boot to Recovery causing the problem, it also makes me think Factory Resetting on Pie (US Unlocked 2.51.617.1) like normal people - as in just go to Android settings, System, Reset options, Erase all data (factory reset) - isn't possible and may cause an even bigger problem (getting stuck on the boot splash screen). Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if it's something really simple, and I'm just epic failing. Like, is the phone stuck in state where there's a "flag" or something telling it to boot to recovery, and there's some easy way to clear that? But for now, I'm staying the F away from Recovery mode... Is anyone else having issues after trying to boot to recovery? Will it even boot to recovery?