[UNBRICK] HTC Unbricking Project

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We are proud to announce that the Sensation is now UNbrickable. Users with the QHSUSB_DLOAD issue can now fully recover their phones and get them fully functional.

Note: This will fix only devices which were bricked by turning S ON. And bricks caused by a damaged hboot via interrupted OTA update/RUU flash on a S-ON device. Any devices bricked with other ways are currently *not* supported. We are working on it

The "core" of the unbricking project dev team:
MOVZX
RussianBear
Fuses
Dexter93
Testing stuff and irc support:
globatron
Deceptivechaos
dburgd84
Snake_skw
Other stuff:
dmcb123
xIndirect
Hawke84

Thanks to trevE, xHausx and the rest of the evo3d team that gave us the basic info to work on and made us curious to see if we could get something out of it. Also thanks to ief and his team @revolutionary for helping us understand the bootloaders better. We should also not forget to thank cxb01 of malshenzu.com and xda members arthurire and untrueparadox who helped in translation.

Prerequisites

• a linux box/live cd with automount disabled and without unity
• the appropriate package for the device
• the latest RUU for your device
• a device bricked by writing security flag 3 with an unsigned hboot, or caused by a damaged hboot via interrupted OTA update/RUU flash on a S-ON device
• a usb cable
• some basic linux experience
• patience

DISCLAIMER: We do NOT guarantee that this method will work for you, or that it is flawless. We are also not responsible if your phone is completely dead after the procedure, or your house burns down because your phone exploded. You are doing this in YOUR OWN RISK.

Instructions

Detailed video on the process. Thanks kgs1992

1. Boot the linux box and download the appropriate package for the device.
   WARNING: IT IS DEVICE SPECIFIC. DO NOT USE THE XE VERSION ON A 4G/ORIGINAL SENSATION AND VICE VERSA
2. Extract the package in the home directory
3. Open up a terminal
4. Remove SIM, microSD card and battery and connect the device using the USB cable. This procedure must be done without battery
5. Detect the device using the script provided. Type this in the terminal
   

   ./brickdetect.sh

   You should get something like sdX. We are interested on that "X"
6. Unplug the usb cable from the device
7. Backup the hboot currently in the phone by using this command. Plug the device in ONLY when asked to
   

   sudo ./emmc_recover --backup b_hboot.img --device /dev/sdX12

   Replace the "X" with the letter the script gave you
8. Follow the on-screen instructions from emmc_recover
9. Hexdump the b_hboot to check the hboot version
   

   hexdump -C b_hboot.img |less

   The output should be like this:
   

   00000000  05 00 00 00 03 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 10 40  |...............@|
   00000010  d8 fc 0f 00 d8 fb 0f 00  d8 fb 1f 40 00 01 00 00  |...........@....|
   00000020  d8 fc 1f 40 00 00 00 00  12 00 00 ea 31 2e 31 37  |...@........1.17|
   00000030  2e 31 31 31 31 00 00 00  38 32 36 30 20 53 50 4c  |.1111...8260 SPL|
   00000040  00 00 00 00 00 f0 20 e3  53 48 49 50 00 00 00 00  |...... .SHIP....|
   00000050  00 f0 20 e3 00 f0 20 e3  48 42 4f 4f 54 2d 38 32  |.. ... .HBOOT-82|
   00000060  36 30 00 00 00 f0 20 e3  39 32 65 35 33 37 31 30  |60.... .92e53710|

   This is the typical hex of a hboot. We are interested to check if that is the hboot partition and if it is, to get to know the version. In this case it is 1.17
10. If in the above step you failed to identify the hboot, unplug all devices connected to that pc, reboot and try again
11. Unplug the device
12. Check again it is the right version, because if you do a mistake here, you won't be able to go back
    You can only flash the same version as the one in the device.
    
    
    !!!!!DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FLASH ANOTHER VERSION OR DOWNGRADE!!!IT HAS BEEN PROVEN FATAL!!!!
    
13. Flash the hboot on the device. Replace "V.VV" with hboot version (eg. 1.17, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20, 1.23, 1.27) and "X" with the one you got from the detect script. Plug the device in ONLY when asked to
    

    sudo ./emmc_recover --flash pyrV.VV.nb0 --device /dev/sdX12 --backupafter hboot_f.nb0

14. Follow the on-screen instructions from emmc_recover. A successful flash should have this output:
    

    511+1 records in
    511+1 records out
    1047808 bytes(1.0 MB) copied

15. Unplug the device, put SIM, microSD card and battery in and power on
16. Congratulations, the device is unbricked.
17. FLASH THE RUU IMMEDIATELY AFTER RECOVERING!! The device will be unstable after the recovery if you don't flash it.

Notes on the procedure:

• If the device doesn't power on, get a copy of the hboot_f.nb0 and b_hboot.img (should be located in the home directory) and contact us
• The connection between the device and the pc will be unstable, and will time out. You have to be quick when doing the above, specially while flashing. If the connection times out don't panic, just unplug and replug the device
• Unity and automount are known to cause issues in ubuntu 11.04 and 11.10. We recommend getting rid of both, or use a 12.04, or 10.04/.10 liveCD
• USB3 ports do not work properly. Please plug the device in a USB2 port
• The liveCD provided has autoount enabled. please disable it
• How to disable automount on ubuntu

  gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.media-handling automount false

Downloads

For Sensation and Sensation 4G:
32bit version MD5: 859cf1c8f4cc96a9c911ecf696579e6f
64bit version MD5: 2540c4ec2083cd975606f2fcb349d666

For Sensation XE:
32bit version MD5: a3bd1dfcca86852aecd48160c6ab771c
64bit version MD5: b284c45b78cf66213ac0ca0d07752e9b


Don't have a linux distro installed on your pc? We highly recommend this livecd

awesome!

any people that know chinese, we need your help:

a chinese forum where a member posted a guide on how to de-brick a phone (zte u960) from qhsusb_mode:

http://bbs.malshenzu.com/read-htm-tid-38591-page-1.html

http://bbs.malshenzu.com/read-htm-tid-41957-page-1.html ( Sales MultiDL tool guide)

they use an additional tool (Sales MultiDL) that backs up alot of .mbn and .img files that we don't have (yet), so i'm not sure if we can pull those files out of the phone manually, or what?



translation per untrueparadox:

1. choose program mode
2. select the .hex and .mbn files from the included package
3. load the .xml included in the package
____ the path to xml file will show here
4. after selecting everything, click download to revive the brick

the files they used to flash:





anyone knows Chinese (google chrome translator is ok for basic understanding, but nothing more than that)?
i did pm the op of those threads to see what he thinks.

Yes a devs thread

So now we basically just have to wait to find out how to get the mbn files?

Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using XDA Premium App

Originally Posted by dexter93

----//notes//----

*the phone wont connect in diag mode using custom roms other than stock. certainly not with ics roms
*more pictures are available in the two threads mentioned

Dex, i'm on gb build of insert coin and diag works for me

Originally Posted by RussianBear

Dex, i'm on gb build of insert coin and diag works for me

thanks. fixed it
it wouldnt work on ics insertcoin for me. it was missing some files( probably those werent even in the test ruu, or baad removed them)

if somebody doesn't like this thread (the one star rating), then contact a moderator or the op with your concerns. i don't see what is there not to like?

Found this. not sure if it helps but it's worth a look
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19215998/Q...ers-Guide-2006

Some stuff about creating an mbn.

Originally Posted by dmcb123

Found this. not sure if it helps but it's worth a look
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19215998/Q...ers-Guide-2006

Some stuff about creating an mbn.

search for "amss" in that pdf- seems like they've already had mentions of dual core msm chips back in 2006 (page 60). this guide is pretty cool! look up page 155-onwards as well.

need to find a newer version of this guide as well.

Originally Posted by RussianBear

search for "amss" in that pdf- seems like they've already had mentions of dual core msm chips back in 2006 (page 60). this guide is pretty cool! look up page 155-onwards as well.

need to find a newer version of this guide as well.

the new version is included in the qpst download. check it