[EVO 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] newuser134:
I have a rooted version OTA 3.29.651.5 (had stock 3.26, upgraded with OTA, then used UR 3.21 one-click root and gained root and permanent nand unlock, lots of thanks to the unrEVOked team for making it that easy), everything is fine, I don't really have any problems removing bloatware and doing things that root allows you, I'm not a custom rom kind of person, so I am happy keeping the rooted stock rom with the newest radio / PRL / PRI. However, I was doing some research on how to get a custom splashscreen installed with the "fastboot flash splash1 xxxxx.rgb565" command while in fastboot bootloader.

I did that, and I would get something like "send: ok, write: failed, remote: not allowed". I did some research on this, and realized it is because I don't have the extended eng fastboot commands with the 0.79.0000 fastboot (dated Aug 20, 2010). I did some more research, and used the instructions by kpkimmel from "xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=800859" (thanks for the great and clear instructions) to put 0.76 hboot with the extended ENG commands on as my bootloader (I did it through sdcard root folder and fastboot with PC36IMG.zip). As I was kind of worried about already, the phone would not boot up after I installed 0.76.2000, I assume because the new radio version I have is not compatible with 0.76.2000, the text file in the PC36IMG.zip that I used seems to refer to rom version 1.32.xxx or similar, so it must need an older radio. Well, I don't really want to downgrade the radio or prl on my phone just to get a custom boot screen. Anyway, after successfully installing 0.76.2000 (title said hboot 0.76.2000, ENG S-off), my phone would not ever go past bootloader, I could get clockworkmod recovery to work, but my nandroid restore would fail, it would say "failed loading boot image".

So from what I kinda thought about the radio or something else being incompatible with the older 0.76.2000, I just flashed the custom screen (it worked perfectly with 0.76.2000), then extracted the 0.79.0000 hboot.img (dated Aug 2010) and the text file from a 3.29 rom, put it in a new PC36IMG.zip, and flashed hboot again through bootloader, it went back to 0.79.0000 still with nand unloacked and root, and then the phone booted up just fine, back into my rooted stock 3.29 rom, didn't even have to do a nandroid restore, my phone was exactly as it was before the 0.76.2000 bootloader flash, same radio, kernal, everything, obviously now with a new splash screen, different from the black text on white background stock splash screen.

Sorry for the long expl, wanted to give everyone a background. So my question is: Can I avoid having to flash 0.76.2000 every time I want to flash a new splash screen, and have eng extended fastboot commands while maintaining a bootloader compatible with my radio and rom version? What I'm asking is, is it possible to have a 0.79 hboot version WITH the extended commands? Would anyone, maybe like toast or flipzmod, be able to make that, so there is no need to pull the sdcard several times while in hboot, switch PC36IMG.zip with different hboot versions, then go back to the original after flashing the new splash screen? This would really make things a lot simpler.

Why didn't the nandroid restore work by the way with 0.76.2000? Isn't that a bad thing if even nandroid won't get you back to where you were? I got lucky going back to the stock hboot fixed it.

Thanks