[Desire Android Development] benko286:
Here's a tutorial for the new users facing unanswered (at a first glance) questions while browsing through the tremendous amount of information that can be found.

There are many tutorials about this, but I will try to make one unique tutorial that will be easy to understand for everyone.

Press a THANKS button if you think that this TUT has helped you ;)

IMPORTANT!

Before you proceed, you need to understand one thing: although these upgrades work in 99% of the cases, you are doing this at your own risk!

If you have any problems or question with rooting and flashing ROM's DO NOT open new thread, cause I will delete it, post everything here;)

Before we start, here is little Q&A section, so please READ this before opening new thread!

How to format and partition SD Card?

Read this

Is my desire already rooted?

- Check if you have superuser app in the app list all rooted phones have it

If I root a device which is already rooted, can it mess anything up?

- You can't mess anything up by re-rooting.

Will my phone get the OTA froyo update from HTC here in the US or do I have to do it manually?

- No OTA updates when rooted, to get them you will have to go back to stock to get the update(yepp unroot, or wait for devs to release rooted stock version)

What is S-OFF?

-HTC implemented security on their newer generation phones. This flag, called @secuflag, controls whether your phone has

it's NAND or flash unlocked. Most noticeably, S-ON (security on) will read-lock your /system and /recovery partition, to name a few. Also, secuflag controls whether zip files being flashed through recovery or fastboot, are signed by HTC. The now notorious S-OFF (security off) will disable this NAND security. Since we are unable to access the Radio NVRAM itself (where secuflag is stored), we turned our attention to HBOOT.

Here is How to S-OFF your HTC Desire

If you think I should add more questions and answers, send me a PM;)

The easiest root method of all is(works for any Desire!):

[GUIDE] One Click How to Root the GSM & CDMA Desire with Unrevoked 3.21

If you want to root using old method, and you have Android 2.2 you will need to downgrade your radio first

[HOWTO] Downgrade Froyo (2.2) to Stock 2.1 (ANY HBOOT | WIN/LINUX/MAC | ROOT)

or

[HOW-TO] downgrade HBOOT 0.92 to 0.80 again

Here is how this thread works:

Newbie Friendly How To's w/ Instructional Videos(tnx to dcogen) - post #1

Root guide for users who have

unbranded(unlocked)

Desire - post #2

Root guide for users who have

branded(locked)

Desire and

How to make GOLDCARD - post #3

Guide how to use fake-flash, unroot, flash ROM and updates - post #4

How to remove apps & boot sound, install apps, and many other things - Post #5

*Unrooting, flashing ROM and updates is same for every device.

There are several methods of rooting device and one of the safest is using Tiny Core Linux(Live CD), since I had several problems using Windows(64-bit) I recommend this option, but if you are using 32-bit OS you should be fine rooting in Windows.

If you have any comments, ideas or requests to improve this thread, post them here ;)

If you find any step that is wrong, or should be improved reoprt it here :)

Let's start flashing:)

Newbie Friendly How To's w/ Instructional Videos

How To Setup ADB

How To Load a Theme

How To Flash a New Recovery Image

How To Switch to a Different SD Card (for use with Swap, Hero ROMs, etc.)

How To Backup/Restore Your Android Phone

HTC Desire How To's

How To: Root the HTC Desire

How To: Load a Custom ROM on the HTC Desire

How To: Unroot the HTC Desire

Credits

Paul - Rooting method, rooting tool, rooting software, etc

Android dev team - adb, android, etc

craigcrawford1988 - for Tiny Core Linux tut and links

MasDroid - for some tutorials

42turkeys - unroot guide

eViL D: - general help

VeeDubZ - how to remove apps

dcogen - Newbie Friendly How To's

whole XDA community