tale of a rooting gone terribly wrong

I can laugh about it now, but...

First let me say that I am new to rooting, but not to toys Here's my train wreck comedy of errors, maybe someone can tell me how all of this was even possible?

I started by rooting using Doomlord's rooting script. That went super-easy. Then I decided I wanted to do a nand backup, so following the instructions here I went and installed ROM manager and used it to flash Clockwork Recovery Mod. CWR wouldn't load when I tried to get to recovery mode to do my backup so I asked around and I discovered that my Atrix was not unlocked. It all goes downhill from there.

Following all the unlocking instructions in the Pudding sticky, I used RSDLite, and the IHOP sbf (since I'm on Bell Canada). Well that looked like it was working, but when RSD showed me at 100% reboot after it was all done, the program stopped showing any further status to say it was complete. I've seen this happen a lot before doing other smartphone activities, and I knew it wasn't going to proceed further. So after giving it another 10 minutes just in case, I unplugged from my PC. And yes, of course, now RSD protests that it wasn't done. Typical. I shut down my phone and rebooted. Time for the Fastboot stage.

(at this point I want to point out that BriefMobile's guide is wrong. you do NOT skip to instruction #13 if you are on gingerbread because that does not work. I ran into a couple of other people who reported the same problem with his guide)

(also at this point, I want to clarify that all my USB drivers needed for this to work were installed, and many of the links provided by Pudding sticky are out of date and don't work. or both so I had to get software from other sources and cross my fingers)

So, now onto the fast boot. But wait! Briefmobile guide (linked as the guide to use in Pudding sticky) never informed me I need to put my sim card back in now. or not. I decided since NO instruction is being given either way, I left it out. Fastboot works fine until I enter the "fastboot oem unlock ###" part. Then the cmd window showed zero progress. Once again I wait 20 minutes this time. Nothing. Finally I sigh "here we go again" and unplug, knowing I am now going to be soft bricked, and I was right. I am now showing "unlocked" at bootup, but I am also now stuck in the logo boot-loop. Tried to reflash, that didn't work. Tried to fastboot boot again, that didn't work.

Finally I caved in and did a factory reset/wipe. My phone is now restored to 2.3.6 but I am now also rooted and unlocked like I wanted to be when I started all of this.

The problem is that none of this went anything nearly as smooth as others claimed it would be. Every step of the way caused errors. RSD didnt work properly in the end, and neither did the fastboot. The instructions for Bell Atrix 2.3.6 are all extremely outdated and/or irrelevant in some cases. Before all this happened I was considering flashing custom ROMS. Now I am absolutely terrified to do so, and would rather just use TiBU to freeze some bloatware and leave it at that. How did this all go so terribly wrong? Are days like this normal in the custom ROM scene?

no ideas anyone? I'm still baffled how my phone went through the train wreck that happened in the above post but still manages to be unlocked and rooted after the factory reset and 2.3.6 re-installed OTA. I still have root, and the phone is still unlocked.

Yeah, second battery pull was because both the phone and the PC cmd window became non responsive after I executed the final stage of the OEM unlock procedure.

The phone went into bootloop. Wouldn't reboot. Had to hard factory reset with the 3 finger salute

well looks like I got all the final kinks worked out. I froze all of my bloatware with TiBU including Motoblur Launcher and I'm now running my phone using Launcher 7. Everything's pretty zippy now and I think I may have just extended my phone as a keeper for the rest of this year