Help on flashing a rom

[Vener]

My friend bought a mda pro(t-mobile) from germany(german language) but before getting back to his home country he brought to a phone shop in china(during plane transfer)the guy flashed it with a unlocked qtek(english,since it can be used with the local provider)
But he was very unhappy with the formating(the phone numbers,emegency call numbers,and the keyboard QWERTZ)
He went to me for help since the local phone shops(very small town) can't do it(lack of roms?)
I have ZERO experience of flashing roms,anyone can show me a step by step of flashing roms and where do i run the programs(PC or phone) ect.
the below things that i would like to know.

1.Whats the driffence between an upgrade and a flash?
2.Whats the driffence between a radio rom,ext rom,a main rom(I got a pretty good idea but it can't hurt to be sure)
3.will need to be unlock again after a rom change?(qtek rom to dopod900)
4.how to i shut down the device(so far i only know how to put it in standby mode which drains power)
5.How to i flash a rom?(dopod 900 from this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=48636 BTW the newest would be best)
6.Are there sevaral methods of doing it?
7.what are the chances of failure/sucess if i follow the instructions carefully
8.what does WWE stands for?
9.why they are zips,rars,cabs,exe for roms?
10.How much battery level does it need to flash a rom?

[TheBlasphemer]

1.Whats the driffence between an upgrade and a flash?

None

2.Whats the driffence between a radio rom,ext rom,a main rom(I got a pretty good idea but it can't hurt to be sure)

Radio ROM is the ROM for the GSM module,
Extended ROM is a package containing operator customizations that will be run after each hard-reset,
Main ROM is the Windows Mobile OS.

3.will need to be unlock again after a rom change?(qtek rom to dopod900)

If you have SIM-Unlocked or CID-Unlocked once your device, you won't have to do it again.

4.how to i shut down the device(so far i only know how to put it in standby mode which drains power)

Put it into flight-mode and then turn it off. If you don't put it in flight mode, the GSM module will stay active.

5.How to i flash a rom?(dopod 900 from this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=48636 BTW the newest would be best)

Get the ROM,
you need nk.nbf for the main rom, ms_.nbf for the extended ROM, and radio.nbf for the radio rom.
you can combine different ROMs from different packages if you want
then either re-pack CID-unlock (SuperCID) your device, use a NoID utility to flash, or re-package the ROMs with your CID-code.
After that, just run the update utility and follow the instructions packed with that.

6.Are there sevaral methods of doing it?

Quick answer: No
Long answer: there are some other ways of doing it (like using an SD-card), but they're quite a lot more complicated, and the traditional method of flashing is good enough for most things.

7.what are the chances of failure/sucess if i follow the instructions carefully

I'd say 3%. I've had a few things go wrong, but I've never had a failure that I couldn't fix. (well, ok, I dropped my previous universal, but that doesn't count as flashing ;))

8.what does WWE stands for?

Word Wide English

9.why they are zips,rars,cabs,exe for roms?

The official packages are self-extracting .exe files, but you can extract them using winrar if you want to get just the ROM files.
.rar and .zip files are often just re-packaged ones.
.cab are installers for Windows Mobile, I haven't seen any ROMs packaged in a .cab though ;) (There are .cab files in extended ROM though)

10.How much battery level does it need to flash a rom?
Just to be on the safe side, make sure it's fully loaded :)
But it doesn't matter that much, as it charges from USB anyway...


If there's anything else you need, don't hesitate to ask.