[Touch CDMA Windows Mobile ROM Development] tempests:
Sorry, in advance, for the long reply.:eek:

First let me say "the rest of us" is an inaccurate statement. There are only a dozen or so people experiencing issues, which does not constitute a bug when experiencing problems. Sure people can experience issues, but they are not always bugs. Most of the time it's a bad flash or some alteration to the phone. I see, many times, mention of this manila or that menu enhancement software or this favorite dialer being installed. Sometimes people are successful, when using those. Other times they break something else that doesn't get found for a few days. Sometimes they even install a tweak or enhancement that was not migrated to the Vogue or is not qvga. Then all of a sudden they are back here complaining about a bug, screwed up menu, or missing elements on their screen, but forget to mention they changed their Opera or Google or used a different youtube, or installed fancy fonts or did some registry tweaks they found over at another forum.

With that said, it is not an anomaly. Do you think the author releases the ROM without testing it? So if he installs it on a Vogue and also has a few other users test it as well, and it is stable, and he releases it, why do you and some others experience issues, while I and the majority of others don't? I think this is the question to ask.

So to answer your question regarding my method:

I connect my phone to my computer via USB. I'm running XP professional with active sync on one computer and Vista Professional with device center on another one I use. Op Sys for me is not an issue. Also I do not use active sync or device center, so they are not an issue as well. I never force bootloader and never use the SD card to install the rom. After connecting via usb, the phone comes up as a device in "My computer" so I know I'm connected.

My order of installation / upgrade is as follows:

1. I backup my data and hard reset the phone.

2. I connect via the usb.

3. I flash phone back to stock, using the exe file supplied from HTC's website and let all customizations run

4. I Flash NFSFAN's Rom, using ROMUpdateUtility.exe letting customizations run

5. I Flash NFSFAN's Rom, same as above, letting customizations run

6. I Flash NFSFAN's Rom, same as above, letting customizations run

7. I Load NFSFAN Carrier specific GPS Registry cab and NFSFAN Carrier Specific Provisioning cab, from the sd card.

8. I Load favorite dialer, from the sd card <---I'm currently using mega with volume

9. I Load contacts, backups and apps. I use Sprite backup or PIM backup.

10. I do a Final Soft reset

I NEVER RESTORE ANYTHING EXCEPT DATA FROM PREVIOUS BACKUP. IF YOU DO, YOU WILL MORE THAN LIKELY BREAK YOUR PHONE AND HAVE TO START AGAIN.

I NEVER INSTALL ANY THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE OR REGISTRY TWEAKS UNTIL I FULLY TEST THE PHONE. As NFSFAN mentioned, most users experiencing issues never mention they installed some menu enhancement or third party software. Several can cause problems, as they were written before Windows Mobile 6.5 or even 6.1.

Many have argued that this long dragged out process is not necessary. They say they just flashed the phone with the new ROM and installed their programs and they are good to go. I have done this as well. However, if you do decide to just flash the phone and roll with it and all of a sudden you experience issues, reboots, lockups, slowness, etc, I suggest using the long dragged out process. I deal with eproms all the time. They are not very reliable when it comes to erasing them. So the 3 time method just insures that any random code, that may be stuck and not overwritten, has a better chance of getting erased.