Unlocking my phone for the first time!

[Knave_II]

Well I'm going to unlock my phone (Sprint Touch) for the first time. I'm trying NFSFAN's wm6.5 ROM. Wish me luck. Hopefully my reading comprehension skills are up to the task so I don't skip a step and blow something up. :)
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Question 1:
When I'm going to run the unlock utility, should ActiveSync actually say that it is connected to the phone? When I get to the rainbow screen ("Serial") then plug in the usb wire, the phone switches to "USB" and I hear the "something's connected" noise in XP. ActiveSync, however, still says "Not connected"

...I seem to be stuck here, at the beginning. At least my phone still works :)

One comment: the NFSFAN 6.5 ROM FAQ seems to want me to run the unlocker with the phone at the Rainbow screen. The PPCGeeks thread by IMCoKeMaN seems to say that you just run the unlocker with the phone normally attached to ActiveSync without unraring or Rainbow mode... Who is right? Am I just confused?

[drowe]

It seems like ActiveSync actually connects to the activesync program on the phone, so when you are in the rainbow screen, it connects without the OS being involved and AS won't show as being connected. If I remember, running the unlocker will put it in rainbow mode and you don't have to do that first. But it has been a long time since I unlocked mine and I forgot the details. I do remember I followed IMCoKeMaN's directions to the letter. Good Luck! It is scary to start, but these guys have got this stuff down to a science!

David

[jstn76rs]

for the unlocker you go throught activesync. then to flash NFSFAN's ROM put the phone into bootloader. You can flash the rom using activesync but i've just got into the habit of using manual bootloader.

[qanda6900]

Knave,
Please let me know if the W6.5 works well on the HTC Touch (Sprint). I am a bit reluctant to try it yet, but if you can do it successfully, and report on how it does, then maybe I'll follow your lead.
Thanks
QA

[Knave_II]

So, I'm trying again. This time I plugged the phone in while it was turned on on the standard home screen. I let ActiveSync show that it was connected, and I ran RomUpdateUtility.exe. I click thru a couple screens, the phone automatically goes over to the rainbow screen, and then the status bar screen. It sits at 0% for about a minute.

...and I get another ERROR[262]: Update Error.

I turn the phone back on and it reboots fine (I guess it never actually started writing to the Phone's memory, just like in my initial post.)

[Knave_II]

One thing before you start, qanda, do you know about Dashwire? It's a way to backup all your phone contacts & info to the web before you wipe the memory. I guess there maybe different backup services out there, but I like to use one just to be safe.

Ah hah! Now it's (ALMOST) working... Here's some stream-of-consciousness directions I'm typing as I do the flash procedure.
1. Plug in phone (phone is turned on, in the normal home screen state)

2. Make sure ActiveSync says you're connected.

3. Run the unlocker (the Vogue_unlocker_MFG_2.31.exe file). Do *not* extract the downloaded file and run the RUU.exe file yourself. It doesn't work that way. You just follow the directions here in the "DOS" looking window that pops up. It does something to the phone, tells you to unplug & replug, ... Eventually a ROM loading program starts & you follow those directions. Then you go back to the "DOS" looking window.

4. Phone automatically reboots and gets to the Windows Mobile initialization screen (tap here & there, etc). Then the phone starts loading the customization stuff automatically. (I was getting a bit worried here that it was stuck on the Windows Mobile 6.1 boot screen -- seemed to take an extra minute or two, but it eventually came up.)

5. Now I guess the phone is *UNLOCKED* but still running the stock Sprint WinMo6.1 OS. I can confirm that when I do the PWR-CameraButton-Stylus reset to the rainbow screen, I see the SPL-2.31.CoKe text in the red bar.

6. Next, I'm going to try loading the NFSFAN 6.5 ROM...

7. I'm back to following the instructions in the thread by codybear *explicitly*: unplug phone, 3-button-reboot to rainbow mode (displaying SERIAL), plug in phone (now displaying USB), run the RUU.exe inside the directory where I decompressed the NSFFAN ROM. Clicked thru the RUU.exe program & phone goes to percent-loading status screen. Phone reboots itself at 100%.

8. Phone reboots *slowly*, the Sprint Splash animation is replaced by an HTC animation. Whew! after several minutes I see a WinMo6.5 setup screen. I do the setup & it autoload customizations. Phone automatically reboots.

9. Still following codybear's thread, I do the RED-GREEN-Stylus hard reset. (You have to hold down the buttons until you see the grey Hard Reset Warning Screen.) ... another SLOW reboot & I go thru the WinMo6.5 tap-screen setup again

10. Like codybear says, I install the Sprint DCD cab that I had copied onto my memory card. Phone wants to reboot again, so I OK it. (Sprint has one DCD cab and another cab for MMS, so I do both.)

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Directions are now complete. Unfortunately when I try to do something with data service I get a "Error Code 1012 Data Provisioning Failure". It's late now, so I'll try to fix it tomorrow. This might help: http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35433

[Knave_II]

Now I got everything working. I fixed the final error -- the "Error Code 1012 Data Provisioning Failure".

I initially tried running the IOTA thing via:

Run IOTA by going to Start->Settings->Personal Tab->Phone->Services Tab->Internet->Get Settings->Start

...nothing happened. The I found this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=410357

I did the RegEdit thing like it describes, setting the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/OEM/DIM/EnableCurrentUserName value to 0. Then I reran IOTA, and all is well.

Then I reinstalled Dashwire, it sync'ed my contacts up & I'm back to normal!

Woohah!

btw...RegEdit is on the NSFFAN ROM under Start Menu-> System Tools