[Desire Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Tryptophsn13:
RESOLVED

For anyone else who is suffering a similar problem, I eventually discovered a solution (in all likelihood the ONLY solution to an unrooted, 0.93 hboot, USB-bricked device) at this thread:

http://xdaforums.com/archive/index.php/t-813476.html

I quote the post in this thread by quanchi on 6th November 2010, 10:30 PM:

I have added clarification points in bold where possible, to maximise the usefulness to others. This method is a life-saver for people in this most tricky of situations, and could potentially be useful for other scenarios, although perhaps less likely to be the only option.

"This is a specific situation - usb brick and totally stock rom, recovery and hboot. It's not required for people who have a modified recovery and a rooted rom. It's easy like 1-2-3.

Before doing anything else enable the Debug Mode in the Applications / Dev menu

1. Download the rageagainstthecage exploit from the authors site:

http://c-skills.blogspot.com/2010/08/please-hold-line.html

NOTE: The link is in the first paragraph (the word 'these'), directly linked to:

http://stealth.openwall.net/xSports/RageAgainstTheCage.tgz

at this moment in time

2. Download the flash_image and misc (mtd0.img) partition image from this thread.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=691639&highlight=usb+brick

Modify the mtd0.img according to your phones CID (how to get the CID also explained in the thread)

NOTE: I'd recommend using the CID generator provided, to better ensure the chances of success, particularly if inexperienced with hex editing (as I was)

2. Download Android Terminal Emulator from the Market

NOTE: This is the one by Jack Palevich. For the specific file paths given here to work, you must use this emulator. However, the method could be adapted to work with any emulator, as long as it creates a folder in internal memory that it has access to like 'shared_prefs' in this case

3. Copy the exploit binary (rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin), the flash_image and modifed mtd0.img to the sdcard via an external card reader

4. Start the Terminal

5. Copy the files to the Terminal app data directory (the only place on the data partition you will have write access while running the Terminal), and make the binaries executable

cat /sdcard/rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin > /data/data/jackpal.androidterm/shared_prefs/rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin

cat /sdcard/flash_image > /data/data/jackpal.androidterm/shared_prefs/flash_image

cat /sdcard/mtd0.img > /data/data/jackpal.androidterm/shared_prefs/mtd0.img

cd /data/data/jackpal.androidterm/shared_prefs/

chmod 755 rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin flash_image

IMPORTANT: The shared_prefs folder only exists after you change the preferences in the terminal emulator. So before commencing, change the text colour or something. Secondly, the '>' (right-facing angle bracket) characters are NOT just side effects of a copy-and-paste process, they are in fact NECESSARY for the cat function to operate as intended (I imagine experienced folks and linux users would already know this, but I didn't)

6. Run the exploit

/data/data/jackpal.androidterm/shared_prefs/rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin

After the exploit exits/finishes there should be a short system freeze, followed by inablity to issue any command from the terminal (don't worry). Exit the Terminal by long pressing HOME and force close the Terminal app from the Application Manager

NOTE: You can tell when it's finished because its final statement is 'forked #number# childs' (in my case it was 'forked 3303 childs')

7. Start the terminal again, a root prompt should be visible

NOTE: What this means is the $ character at the beginning of the line becomes a # character

8. Flash the misc partition

cd /data/data/jackpal.androidterm/shared_prefs

./flash_image misc mtd0.img

9. Reboot

Done and done

Enjoy"