[G1 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dejavecu:
First off I would like to say that this is one of the best forums I have ever seen as the amount of support and helpful users and creativity put into these phones are staggering. I was going to go to Windows mobile for my next phone but I now doub it with this site or at least maybe I will dual boot.

So I am sure I am asking questions that have already been answered but my problems with the phone (USA G1) are many and the answers to some of the problems are so fragmented that I had at one point 14 tabs open for reference to solve just a few issues. I am 70% noob with the G1. I have had the phone for a year with no major issues just the annoying Force Close that seemed unecessary for the commonality of the app that had problems. Texts were annoying because I could not tell if they had been sent the previous day or recently as service at my home is come and go and my older Verizon phone had envelope information and even said if the person had read it or not so no annoying duplication. However, otherwise it was stable and would last about a day and a half with the double size battery.

Recently, however I had rebooted from the power button prompt and it got stuck (I can't remember on what screen) and figured installing a different ROM and other files would fix the problem. By the way, I had bought the phone rooted and I believe it was using JF 1.42 and a Cyagen mod (forgive my spelling). So I followed step by step from this forum the wiki on the lastest stable Cy ROM. I followed the instructions to the T.

Being new to the software, it was a slow process with a lot of repeating of steps discovering little details that were not mentioned like naming something update instead of update.zip like instructed or adding the .img as an extension. So I had nearly made it and then I came to the DangerSPL and other files to be loaded on the phone in order via fastboot. Despite, several attempts I could not get the skateboarding droids or the rainbow screen to come up so I finally decided to just continue as I had been using Amon-RAs 1.7 update zip feature to follow the instrucions and install the software in order. All was well until I got to flashing the actual ROM which said something about how it said the E: [insert file name here] was not correct so it aborted everytime but it did show some progress on the yellow bar.

Next came the issue of the G1 screen hanging up after the above problem and for some reason I could get to the 1.7 screen but only by holding the button required to access Amon RA longer than usual other wise it would say the build of Amon RA at th ebottom with no commands and the reboot itself or hold it longer and finally get to the Amon RA but it would not load my recovery files as I had made many along the way.

I nearly gave up but then came across this solution which worked by using method 1 at well I am not allowed to pu the websit in here but I am not allowed by the mods. but it is the 4th one down if you google "how to fix a soft brick g1" and the link is titled Unbrick - android-roms - How To: Recover your G1 from a bring ...However, it did get stuck at the rainbow screen as it finally let me do the fastboot and I saw the Androids skateboardig but it hung at the rainbow screen. It was here I noticed that my 32A phone was now a 32B. I took the battery out and powered it up and lo and behold it was asking me to put in my google information and I finally made it to the home screen.

I thought "Yes!". Now, I can try again since it will fastboot now which was what was recommended at the final steps but I was mistaken. I could not searc the market for common apps like wave secure and it frequently said it does not exist. I saw that my terminal app was gone and when I was finally able to download it from the market and my superuser app was gone and the termina would not respond as before to the input of SU.

Then, I noticed my phone's screen would randomly come on and only sometimes go off. When I pressed menu it was as if it the call button was stuck and it would either repeatedly bring up voice dial or call someone. The buton does not appear to be stuck otherwise. When it would briefly stop, acting like the call button was in turbo mode it would give me the option to mount the SD card as I had lost my micro sd card reader but never give me a chance to mount it before the call button interrupted with google dial or calling some number.

I do not believe this to be a hardware issue because as far as I remember the call button worked normally during the steps as it was requently used. So my questions, at the moment, are these:

1. How do I tell if the call button problem is a hardware or software issue?

2. Once I find my card reader and will I be able to use the factory bootloader to go through the updates.

3. Obviously I have derooted my phone (or maybe I can delete the diag from sd card and it will operate as it is derooted), will I be able to reroot my phone by using my backups of nandroid basically leaving me at whatever step I was on to the road of recovery?

4. How do I use my nandroid backup to recover especially if I am stuck with the factory bootloader?

5. I copied my SD card before I did the wipe originally so will I be able to find a .xml from handcent with my texts? (I text myself my mileage for work as with my hours, it is easier than using an app plus it saves space for other apps)? Should I load that backup nandroid first and start over?

6. Is there a quicker way to root like...a program?

7. What is your advice for the future other tha obviously backing up my texts more?

8. When did wave secure start costing money? I think I might have backed up everything a few days before the crash but I have no access to it now.

9. What other key combinations can I later use for the fast boot?

10. When formating the card to fat32 what allocation do you use and do you use quick format?

11. What is lost dir. and why is it empty?

12. In Amon RA 1.7 there are several caches which I cleard all of them when asked to clear the the cache in the wiki directions? Should I clear all of them and what are the seperate caches, espicially the davik one?

I am sure I am missing some question but I will post more as I try to follow your directions or attempt other methods. I apologize for the long, long story but I wanted make sure I did not leave out any detail so this can be resolved ASAP because I am sure I am receiving texts and calls and people are probably thinking I am ignoring them (no one leaves voicemails anymore so how can I know if they called or texted during the phone's sickness). I also apologize if I have broken any forum rules or posted in the wrong section or violated some. Thanks guys in advance. I miss the fat little thing so much.