[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro Software Upgrading] AllanonMage:
Situation update

I have had a couple of offers and much sympathy. Thanks!

My unit from expansys is up and running. I was up till 3 am saturday morning playing around with it. I stumbled across a few posts that gave instructions on how to deal with a potentially bricked device. As far as I can figure. my phone was shipped to me without an OS. I knew that PCs could do that, but can you just blank the OS on a phone? I can theoretically see how that might be possible, but why would that happen? Do they not get shipped out with OS's? that baffles me.

The specific process of deduction I used:

read the manual (the service manual from HTC). It said to either reload the ROM or the mobo was defective. I started looking on this forum for the procedures and files neccessary.

It seemed that my phone was not booting, so I looked into the ROM upgradeing/reflashing pages.

Links to pages I found useful:

http://xdaforums.com/announcement.php?f=357

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=367448

http://wiki.xda-developers.com/

http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=HTC_Universal

http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Flashing Guide

http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Uni_ROM_Upgrade

http://wiki.xda-developers.com/inde...consumption measurements of the HTC Universal

http://wiki.xda-developers.com/inde...y car or USB charger! It just doesn't charge!

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=298613

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=285435

As you can see, the wiki was quite helpful for me. Thae list above is not inclusive. I thought I had bookmarked all the pages I found helpful, but it did not apepar to be so. I have done much reading on this forum, and I purchased my original Universal over a year ago. I say that to let any newbies know that this is not a simple process and should not be attempted until you have a clear picture of what's going on.

I also tried the set 0 14 procedure, but that sis NOT work in my case.

What finally got me was the imate ROM I have attached to this page. It was able to see my universal, but only when I was in the bootloader. I will say that again because it bears repeating. I put the phone into the bootloader and ONLY THEN could I update the ROM on the device. I found no instructions anywhere on this, I had to figure it out on my own. The way I discovered it though is kinda neat. When I just plugged the phone into my computer, windows would not recognize it and say that it malfunctioned. If I plugged it into my computer with it in the bootloader, I got that nice sound that windows makes when new hardware is found. Also, I tried the Universal RUU and it did not recognize that the phone was attached in either way. Lastly, I first tried the ROM update with the phone not int he bootloader, and the IMATE program didn't see the phone. I tried it with it in the bootloader, and it did its thing.

I have attached a few of the files I found useful. I found these on this site, in some posts.

This is not a formal writeup, so please forgive any grammatical errors or rambling. I just wanted to share what I found.

So I finally just switched the SIM card back into the new phone. I tried to get MMS going, and SAME FRAKKIN thing: small pics. ARGH!!