[myTouch 3G Slide Android Development] Phylum:
Here's the process I used today using a machine that never had an Android or USB device plugged in. (Almost a fresh installation.)

From the Slide enable USB Debugging:

Go to Home

Push the Menu button

Select Settings

Select Applications

Choose Development

Make sure USB Debugging is checked

Go to your computer and open up Device Manager.

Plugin your Slide into your computer.

Windows should begin the detection process.

In device manager you will ultimately see an 'ADB' device. (I think if you don't have USB Debugging enabled, and/or if you have other drivers still present on your machine from previous installations, you'll probably see 'myTouch 3G slide', 'My HTC' or some combination of one of the previously mentioned devices or something different altogether. When the dust settles, 'ADB' is the one we want, and if you don't see that, take note of what you do see.

You'll probably see an exclamation point on the 'ADB' device and it will say the device driver(s) could not be loaded.

Reboot your machine. (I left my Slide plugged in; I don't think this matters.)

When Windows comes back up, go back to Device Manager, locate 'ADB'

Right click on 'ADB' and select 'Update Driver'

Browse your computer for the driver software

You can specify the path here, but that will most certainly fail. (Hasn't worked yet on 3 computers for me; maybe it'll work for you.) So instead, choose the option that says something like 'Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.'

Double click Show All Devices (or the very first option, way at the top; it may not have an icon next to it)

Click 'Have Disk' and point it to the location of the Android SDK usb driver folder.

Select 'Android ADB Interface' from the list (Not certain, yet, what the others are used for.)

Click Yes when/if Windows complains.

Click Install when you receive the prompt to install a product from Google.

It should be correctly listed in Device Manager and fully functional.

Note:

Arguably, steps 7 & 8 can be skipped. I did it just for good measure.

Assuming you've downloaded the necessary files to root your Slide and placed them into the Tools folder of your Android SDK folder do one,

but not both

, of the following:

Browse (via Explorer) to the Tools folder of the Android SDK folder and double click loop batch file,

or

Launch a command prompt (Start > Run > Cmd), then 'cd' to the Tools folder of the Android SDK folder and type 'loop'.

This will further confirm that your system, and more importantly ADB.exe, can communicate with your Slide. If all is well, no matter which option you chose above, you should see something like

List of devices attached​

HT1234567890 device​

If you see something like

List of devices attached​

HT1234567890 offline​

Then at least there's some level of communication, but we'll need to troubleshoot further:

Disconnect and reconnect the phone from the PC

Issue the following command: adb kill-server

Launch Task Manager and kill off any ADB.exe processes

Restart your computer

So lets assume your device is functional and Windows/ADB can communicate with your device. Not to toot my own horn, but I recommend saving the following block of code as a batch file and running it.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:::	Julius' | Phylum's Modified LOOP Script v1
:::
:::	This is just my small contribution to the xda-developer
:::	community. I just modified, slightly, what was already
:::	provided to help make things a bit easier to work with.
:::
:::	This script will...
:::	check the current working directory for adb.exe
:::	if its not found it prompts for the path (don't include the last \)
:::	it performs another sanity check for adb.exe before proceeding
:::	its starts the `adb devices` loop and displays the results
:::
:::
:::	Please modify as necessary. I'm also open to suggestions.
:::	If you'd like to give credit where credit is due, please do so.
:::
:::	juliuspiv [at] gmail [dot] com
:::
:::	Many thanks to eugene373 and kingofyo1 for breaking ground
:::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

@echo off
echo. & echo.

set counter=1
set missing=0

:FINDADB
if %missing%==1 echo. & echo WARNING: ADB.EXE Not Found in "%adbpath%". Please try Again
if exist "%CD%\adb.exe" (
set adbpath=%CD%
set missing=0
goto ADBLOOP
) Else (
set CD=
echo Please enter the full path to adb.exe with no trailing slash
set /p adbpath="Example: C:\Android\tools not C:\Android\tools\: "
)

if exist "%adbpath%\adb.exe" (
set missing=0
goto ADBLOOP
) Else (
set missing=1
goto FINDADB
)

:ADBLOOP
set device=
set status=
for /f "usebackq tokens=1,2 skip=1" %%i in (`"%adbpath%^\adb.exe" devices`) do set device=%%i & set status=%%j

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Apparently these work too	::
::	if "%device%" NEQ " "	::
::	if "%device%" NEQ NULL	::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
if "%status%" EQU "device" set status=online :: connected
if "%status%" EQU "offline" set status=offline :: disconnected
if "%status%" EQU "recovery" set status=recovery :: In Recovery Mode!!1!
if "%device%" NEQ "" echo %date% %time% -- Try Number: %counter% Found Device: %device% Status: %status%

:: These lines do the same as above, except they don't display time, try count and time+try count respectively
:: Comment the one above (add REM in front) first then uncomment only one of the lines below (aka remove the REM)
rem if "%device%" NEQ "" echo Try Number: %counter% Found Device: %device% Status: %status%
rem if "%device%" NEQ "" echo %date% %time% -- Found Device: %device% Status: %status%
rem if "%device%" NEQ "" echo Found Device: %device% Status: %status%

:: If you want it to output that nothing was found, use this line instead of the one above
rem if "%device%" NEQ "" (
rem	echo %date% %time% -- Try Number: %counter% Found Device: %device% Status: %status%
rem ) Else (
rem	echo %date% %time% -- Try Number: %counter% Device Not Found
rem )

set /a counter=counter+1
goto ADBLOOP

If all is well you should see something like

P:\>tools\loop.bat

Please enter the full path to adb.exe with no trailing slash
Example: C:\Android\tools not C:\Android\tools\: P:\DL\Android\android-sdk_r06-windows\android-sdk-windows\tools
Tue 06/22/2010 19:31:56.27 -- Try Number: 143 Found Device: HT1234567890 Status: online/connected
Tue 06/22/2010 19:31:56.49 -- Try Number: 144 Found Device: HT1234567890 Status: online/connected
Tue 06/22/2010 19:31:56.69 -- Try Number: 145 Found Device: HT1234567890 Status: online/connected
Tue 06/22/2010 19:31:56.89 -- Try Number: 146 Found Device: HT1234567890 Status: online/connected
Tue 06/22/2010 19:31:57.09 -- Try Number: 147 Found Device: HT1234567890 Status: online/connected
Tue 06/22/2010 19:31:57.31 -- Try Number: 148 Found Device: HT1234567890 Status: online/connected
Tue 06/22/2010 19:31:57.54 -- Try Number: 149 Found Device: HT1234567890 Status: online/connected
Tue 06/22/2010 19:31:57.75 -- Try Number: 150 Found Device: HT1234567890 Status: online/connected

Hit CTRL+C then Y [Enter] to stop the batch file. Or let it run so you can monitor what's going on. (I would let it run.)

Here's the fun part, and unfortunately, as far as I can tell, this is just going to take some trial an error. From what I've been able to gather so far, there are four (4) methods for getting into the bootloader/recovery screens:

Power off your slide then, when its off, hold the down volume button and power buttons at the same time. (just like the post & video say)

Run: adb reboot bootloader

Run: adb reboot-bootloader

Run: adb reboot recovery

Note:

Not certain what the differences are between `adb reboot bootloader` and `adb reboot-bootloader` - they both appear to do the same thing.

For what its worth, I used the fourth method to get into the recovery mode and proceed with the root procedure, but it doesn't look like the phone will *always* be detected [in recovery] when using any of the methods above.

***UPDATE: Following up on sombionix's post , I decided to do some testing of my own. I did in fact swap the stock SDCard with the one I used for music on my BlackBerry 9700. I placed the original Slide SDCard back in the Slide, powered up using vol down+power, all while running the loop script, selected 'Recovery' and it was successfully detected as 'offline'. I disconnected the cable from the phone then reconnected it and boom: recovery mode on the first try. So as he said, there's appears to be a timing element. If I have success repeating a procedure, I'll update.