[Touch HD Windows Mobile ROM Development] Gede:
Dear people, I have been reading the posts about the problems with new installed cooked roms, and its hard to wade through the clutter and confusion.

So here my humble suggestions, in the hope the reports about the roms will be a bit more reliable and readable.

First you must understand, that your new cooked rom makes your phone a totally different machine as the original one.

You should ASSUME, that its NOT compatible with any software you used before. Most software and add-ons are made for the original roms and NOT for your newly installed cooked rom. (Unless stated otherwise by the add-on maker)

New cooked roms ARE DIFFERENT, WORK DIFFERENT.

Although the chefs (people who cook new roms) do their best to provide you with a perfect rom, it most likely will contain bugs and incompatibilties of some sort.

They, and potential users, need to know those bugs (and possible workarounds).

BUT

If you installed 3rd party software (including graphical stuff), or used programs to restore settings and data, you MAY have installed or restored incompatible stuff.

And this may cause an otherwise good working cooked rom to show "bugs", but are in fact incompatibilities.

SO

READ the instructions of the chef carefully.

DON'T install or change anything on your freshly installed cooked rom, and TEST ALL the functionality and programs supplied on the rom, WITHOUT restoring anything, not even your contacts (but add a few manually). Don't take this lightly. This IS THE ONLY WAY to see if your cooked rom works correctly.

If you notice any bugs during this stage, try to find if there are similar bugs reported in the thread about the cooked rom. If not describe as good as you can, what you were doing that led to the bug, and report. You could include your current radio version and original rom version. And tell you didn't install anything. If you find a similar bug in the thread, confirm you have the same (and quote the other report), adding more RELEVANT information if you have.

Then, one by one, do the things you would like to do.

ONE by ONE.

After every action you take that changes the content of your phone, TEST the functionality of the phone. Again, don't take this lightly. Some programs or add-ons may affect the working of the phone in other areas as they would on an other rom.

If you find bugs after "changing the content", and this inlcudes programs contacts etc, see if similar bugs have been reported. If not describe as good as you can, what you were doing that led to the bug, and report. You could include your current radio version and original rom version. And tell you what you installed or changed, also what you already had changed before this current change, so ALL programs you have installed and changes you have made). If you find a similar bug in the thread, confirm you have the same (and quote the other report), adding more RELEVANT information if you have.

IN ALL CASES, report the version of the cooked rom you are using. (The threads start in most cases with version x.xx but are changed during the development to x.yy, so a version number makes it easier for people who are wading through the hundreds of posts)

Maybe chefs could start a new thread for every version the put online? The pages about your previous release under your new one are irrelevant, and where to start reading about the latest? Makes things easier to read and understand!!

Thanks and happy flashing!