[8525, TyTN, MDA Vario II, JasJam ROM Development] jem101:
Hermes upgrade problems

Firstly my apologies for hijacking this thread and for the length of this posting but I am really stumped with upgrading my Hermes and I am really hoping that someone here will be able to point me in the right direction.

I have a T-Mobile MDA VARIO II (Hermes300) and about a year ago successfully upgraded the rom from WM5 to 6 (not the official one but an earlier version downloaded from someone on this site). I would now really like to try upgrading it to one of the 6.5 versions and I have been trying to do this for the past few days with absolutely no luck. The phone is working perfectly and I can sync with ActivSync 4.5 on an XP machine and also with WMDC on both a Vista PC and Windows 7 PC -luckily, working in IT I have quite a lot of kit about.

If I manually go into the bootloader screen it tells me I am running IPL-1.01 and SPL-1.04. From various postings on this site I have downloaded,

Hard-SPL-V7 from http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=296722

Josh's WM6.5 Test v.8 from http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=461490

And also SSPL from somewhere but the filename is SSPL-HERM so I am assuming that this is the right version.

The procedures I have followed and results I have gotten are these.

Vista and W7 PC, connect the Hermes via USB, WMDC detects and installs the standard driver 'HTC USB Sync' Phone syncs contacts etc. successfully. Run the RUUWrapper utility from the Hard-SPL-v7 directory (running as administrator). All seems ok, it detects the current version and asks if I want to update. Hit Next button, it says it is Verifying the information on your Hermes... Please wait.... It then fails with a 260 error, but WMDC remains connected. The phone appears to do nothing.

Did a bit more research and discovered the trick of downgrading the drivers to the older XP version, did that and checked the properties of the HTC USB Sync driver and found that the date was 2004. Now WMDC will not connect at all, tried running the RUUWrapper utility, the phone repeatedly says 'Connecting to Host' but fails and eventually I get the same 260 error. At no time does the phone go into the bootloader or show any signs of doing anything else.

As an experiment, I tried first getting the phone into the bootloader and then trying with the same result. Reboot the phone and back to square one.

XP SP3 laptop, all .net framework components installed, Connected the phone, ActiveSync 4.5 (fresh download and install) connects fine and I can sync perfectly. Start the RUU utility, it goes through all the screens, gets to the Verifying the information on your Hermes... Please wait screen, then ActiveSync quits itself and the phone disconnects. The phone then tries to reconnect, which it manages once, then Activesync quits again, the phone disconnects and tries and fails to reconnect. If I try to manually restart Activesync it loads, fails to connect and quits again. Eventually RUU reports a 260 error and when I close it it throws up a .net framework error and doesn't properly clean up after itself. I have made sure that .net has been upgraded to 3.5 and nothing else produces errors. If I try to repeat this with the phone it bootloader mode, it fails with a 262 error while the phone itself is showing 0% upgrade image completed. I can soft reset the phone to get it back to working order.

Lastly I tried the direct upgrade from SD card method. Clean format a 128 Meg SD card as FAT32. Copied the RUU_signed.nbh file from the Hard-SPL-V7 directory onto it. Renamed the file to HERMIMG.nbh, inserted the card and restarted the phone into the bootloader. It seems to detect the image and starts to install but immediately displays a 00068002 message and hangs. Soft rebooting the phone brings it back to working order ok. Tried copying the SSPL-HERM file onto the internal phone memory and running it but it won't run saying that the file isn't signed properly or one of its components cannot be found.

So as to can see I'm completely stumped, unless there is something up with the phone itself although as I said I did manage to upgrade from WM5 to 6 some time ago. Am I just doing something really stupid here or is something odd going on? Any suggestions gratefully received.

Many thanks in advance.

John