[Desire HD Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] fevangelou:
(Please note that this is a post towards the most advanced users)

So I got a brand new DHD, fully unbranded from Expansys, about 2 weeks ago. The unit worked just fine and I was learning my way around with Android (being a former iPhone user). The last few days, for some unknown reason, the SD card could not (for the love of god) mount to the phone. Tried different cards, reboots (fast or normal), even took the battery out. Did that several times. Nothing...

Then the latest 1.72 update appeared. But the device demanded an SD card to download and execute the update... Obviously a no-go for me.

So I tried other things like factory-resetting the phone. Nothing changed.

Then I tried to boot into "recovery" mode (holding the vol down key and power key together). When I clicked on any option, the device would just restart (showing the green HTC logo on white background).

Since I'm a first time Android user, but enough experienced computer user (though no programmer or anything...), I dug around to find solutions. And quite extensively to be honest. All I could read everywhere was stuff like "if you apply this unofficial mod, you may brick your device, be careful!". OK, not a problem for me. I wanted to just use the official ROMs to possibly bring my device back to normal in its entirety. Nothing was mentioned of official RUUs bricking phones. Instead, it seemed like the norm especially for advanced users who patched their device and wanted to bring it back to factory default so they could send the device to HTC's service (for some other reason). So I found the official ROMs here in this community (hXXp://xdafil.es/index.php?path=DesireHD%2FRUU/ - used the 1.72.405.3 WWE specifically - for my unbranded phone), setup a Windows machine, added the HTC Sence drivers (verified it works) and went on to apply the ROM...

The RUU wizard informed me that my previous version to be upgraded was 1.32.405.6. New version to be applied: 1.72.405.3. OK, let's go...

The ROM failed. Gave one of these identity or version errors. Phone bricked. Completely. When the phone powers up it shows a WHITE HTC logo in BLACK background with 4 notification signs in all 4 corners of the screen. If the device is plugged via USB and then unplugged, it would show up the bootloader screen which contains the following info...

ACE PVT SHIP S-ON
HBOOT-0.85.007
MICROP-0438
RADIO-26.0302.26_M
eMMC-boot
Oct 11 2010, 12:47:02

RUU

Tried again, nothing. Tried with older ROMs. Still nothing.

There is also nothing that can be done at this point and I've seen others mention similar bootloader screens, but the steps they followed next, worked, and they could bring their device back to life…

Went to the official HTC service for them to check it out. What I guess they did, because I wasn't in front of the repair guy, is that they tried to apply some ROM as well. Which didn't work. They said it's best to change the device's motherboard, which could take up to 2 months!!

So I'm trying to figure out what to do next (on my own this time…).

After searching for 2 days, I find others with similar problems and the steps that more advanced users suggest. Which is to create a "goldcard" (using some SD card) and then using fastboot to apply one of the ROMs…

So in total, the steps I took are:

a) format one or more working SD cards as FAT32 on Windows machine.

b) get the SD card CID number (I used Ubuntu with "hal device | grep mmc.cid")

c) convert it using this online tool: hXXp://hexrev.soaa.me/

d) create the goldcard.img using hXXp://psas.revskills.de/?q=goldcard

e) use the Goldcard tool (v0.0.5) or the HxD Hex Editor to create+write the patched goldcard.img to the SD card. Tried this with 2 different SD cards.

f) I extracted the rom.zip files from the last 2 official RUUs, grabbed the fastboot/adb files which I placed in windows/system32 and then used the "fastboot flash zip rom.zip" commands to write the official ROM back to the device.

Fastboot is working, I can control the device (e.g. reboot it remotely). Adb is NOT working.

"fastboot getvar all" returns this (if it helps):

INFOversion: 0.5
INFOversion-bootloader: 0.85.0007
INFOversion-baseband: 26.03.02.26_M
INFOversion-cpld: None
INFOversion-microp: 0438
INFOversion-main: 1.32.405.6
INFOserialno: HT0B3R______ (hidden)
INFOimei: 352668041______ (hidden)
INFOproduct: ace
INFOplatform: HBOOT-7230
INFOmodelid: PD9810000
INFOcidnum: HTC__203
INFObattery-status: good
INFObattery-voltage: 4187mV
INFOpartition-layout: Generic
INFOsecurity: on
INFObuild-mode: SHIP
INFOboot-mode: RUU
INFOcommitno-bootloader: dirty-7eafc656
INFOhbootpreupdate: 11
INFOgencheckpt: 0
all: Done!

INFOcidnum confirms it's an unbranded device and INFOversion-main confirms that the device is still stuck with the previous ROM version (but obviously wrecked).

If I execute "fastboot flash zip rom.zip" for the 1.32 ROM I get this output:

>fastboot flash zip rom_132.zip
sending 'zip' (293949 KB)... OKAY
writing 'zip'... INFOadopting the signature contained in this image...
INFOsignature checking...
INFOzip header checking...
INFOzip info parsing...
INFOchecking model ID...
INFOchecking custom ID...
INFOchecking main version...
INFOstart image[hboot] unzipping for pre-update check...
INFOstart image[hboot] unzipping & flushing...
INFO[RUU]UZ,hboot,0
INFO[RUU]UZ,hboot,100
INFO[RUU]WP,hboot,0
INFO[RUU]WP,hboot,100
INFOstart image[boot] unzipping & flushing...
INFO[RUU]UZ,boot,0
INFO[RUU]UZ,boot,31
INFO[RUU]UZ,boot,68
INFO[RUU]UZ,boot,99
INFO[RUU]UZ,boot,100
INFO[RUU]WP,boot,0
INFO[RUU]WP,boot,100
INFOstart image[recovery] unzipping & flushing...
INFO[RUU]UZ,recovery,0
INFO[RUU]UZ,recovery,20
INFO[RUU]UZ,recovery,44
INFO[RUU]UZ,recovery,66
INFO[RUU]UZ,recovery,89
INFO[RUU]UZ,recovery,100
FAILED (status read failed (Too many links))

If I repeat just repeat the same command, I may see a slightly different walk-through (e.g. it may stop at the "boot" section or proceed one more step after "recovery" - called "user" if I recall), but the resulting line is always the same:

FAILED (status read failed (Too many links))

The same thing happens with newer RUUs.

Any ideas folks?