HTC Thunderbolt Issues - Stuck at HTC Logo... Recovery not working, etc...

here is my issue.


2 weeks ago, i rooted my phone. all was well. flashed CWM Recovery 5.0.2.1 for my Thunderbolt. I made a backup just before i rooted so that in case ANYTHING went wrong, it would unroot me and fix any problems. So, here i am, backing up apps with Titanium Backup, and it backed up fine. The next thing i did was start to uninstall HTC Bloatware... I knew which ones were the ones i could remove, plus even if i removed the wrong one, i could just restore using my image backup. After removal, the phone instantly ran better. i had over 65% free memory space... This was all well and good, until i rebooted the phone. the instant i rebooted my phone, i was getting the flashing HTC Quietly Brilliant screen. i had done NOTHING to it to cause this. It would alternate from HTC splash to Thunderbolt animation.


So, knowing what was wrong, (UI not loading) i went to recover my image from CWM. that went fine. but things just got worse. After a successful recovery (according to CWM) i rebooted, but to my surprise, now its worse. its stuck at the HTC boot logo. ALL MANNER OF ROMS DO NOT WORK!!! recoveries, new OS, anything, all the same result. AT LEAST with the thunderstick full blown ROM, i can get back to the looping splash screen, but not any further. i DONT KNOW what is wrong but i am hoping one of you mad phone geniuses out there can get my phone working. i tried getting s-off with revolutionary, but it failed because the phone has to be booted up for it to work, and is something i obviously cant do at this point... relocking the phone made things worse too because i unlocked using the HTCdev method.

This is not a boot loop, as it doesnt loop. it just sits there. i have tried every available resource on this, and other sites. i must have read over 1,000 posts in the past week to try and gather what the devil happened to my phone... If its any help, i did accidently delete the settings storage APK file, but a restore should have fixed that. i want to lock up the phone to send it in for repair but i cant gain s-off to flash a new radio with the phone in its current state. i know how to do all if these things but the phone wont let me.

i am nearly pulling my hair out...

smtom said:

Reformat the sd card to fat32 and flash an RUU file to put you back to stock.

Sent from my ADR6400L using xda premium

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any RUU downloads that would have been available on multiupload.com are disabled and redirects to to "the internet vs., holywood". besides, as i said, any attempt to flash any rom no matter what it is fails. Well, technically it FLASHES ok, but doesnt actually work. as far as i know, the phone has 2 bootloaders in any given android phone. There is the primary HTC Bootloader (Hboot) and a secondary ROM UI Bootloader. (Android Boot) i think what has happened is that this part has become corrupted and i wanted to know how to access this and reformat that. supposedly you cant because its partitioned, and formatting the partitions would fix my issue. problem is that i have done all of this. to answer the second reply, yes, i can get the phone to be recognized in any mode as long as its fastboot, or recovery. Fastboot.exe works, and adb recognizes it in recovery as being IN recovery mode. unfortunately, with my device still locked, i cannot flash a new bootloader, which might solve my problem. this is not like any issue currently on XDA so far as i read, so this is why i created a new thread.

I am sure the Moderators will agree that my problem seems to be unique. After reading what seems to be hundreds of forums, i cannot solve the issue. While technically i am a newbie here, i am no stranger to modding phones. i have been at it for over 4 years now. THIS problem is absolutely a first for me. At least before i could restore using CWM, but even that failed. i checked my MD5 Sum for CWM backup and it checked out.

If someone can provide me a link to an ORIGINAL, unmodded, RUU that shipped with the phone, (PRE OTA 2012) that ISNT that stupid file-factory corrupted crap, i would be extremely indebted to that person. last time i used File-factory, it took THREE hours and the download was corrupted according to CWM. it refused to flash the phone even though Chrome said it completely downloaded (Error: Bad - Installation Aborted). There was no MD5 SUM to compare with so thats also another problem. i absolutely need that info to properly flash the phone. All the other ROMS i downloaded like TSGB and Lightning Rom technically flashed fine after a full wipe, but refused to go past their own "Open Mobile" splash screen.

So you see, i am at a loss with this phone, as all i did was reboot after rooting it, and nothing i did could have possibly caused this kind of failure...

will this really work??!? lol

trter10 said:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/61129367/Stock-ROM.zip

013CBDD3A9B28BC894631008FA2148E2

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If this works, i will be forever grateful. and something that mere Custom ROMS wont do, is repair any boot issues and lock up my phone again right? i hope at least it fixes the issue.

new problem... i think...

cyberkeeper1 said:

If this works, i will be forever grateful. and something that mere Custom ROMS wont do, is repair any boot issues and lock up my phone again right? i hope at least it fixes the issue.

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ok. so the download finished fine so far as i know, but now CWM says ITS bad too. i will try again but i cant seem to flash any stock rom no matter if its OTA or pre-OTA from CWM. is there a way to flash a rom from the PC via adb or something?

i will try that. previous hboot flashes always fail. it reads the archive, but never goes to "checking zip". it loads, checks, and then parses. i was successful with my evo shift earlier today, but that thing is ancient compared to my thunderbolt. With the Shift, i was able to gain root AND s-off with an old bootloader and i dont even need a new one.

i wanted to do the same with my bootloader in case another disaster hits because then i can flash whatever RUU i want with s-off. i will make sure the MD5 SUM matches before flashing. i forgot to do that anyhow.

Hboot flash failed. went through the motions of scanning it and it scanned the whole thing and then did nothing. it returned me to Boot Choices. Like Fastboot, recovery, etc... i tried twice. are you absolutely certain that is the shipping firmware that formats the entire phone, and not just updates it? i cant send it to verizon even though they know it was illegal to lock up my phone... Anyhow, i realy need this thing working and i have racked my brain enough to damage it already... lol. if it fails again i will try to redownload it. So far it loads and does NOT ask me to start the update. could be a version issue because it does not complain about anything else.

lemew said:

Have you tried following the instructions in the return to stock thread in the android development section stickies? This may help you.

Sent from my ADR6400L using xda app-developers app

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yes i have. i cannot do what it asks because it requires my phone to be functional to flash it using hboot. i need a signed copy of an older RUU. hboot doesnt do anything with it. its a valid copy, and i can see all the images and contents in windows and linux, but all i can get hboot to do is read it, then it doesnt ask me to update. i dont know what to do now.

ok well i will literally try ALL of the signed images. i will see if hboot will update it.

mpcapps said:

I had this exact same problem literally yesterday (stuck at HTC screen) with some different cwm symptoms. I'm guessing my cwm was corrupted because the phone would reboot after about 30 seconds being in cwm, preventing me from flashing any roms. oh, and my backup image was corrupted as well. awesome. Flashing other CWMs did not fix the CWM problem.

Your problem sounds similar in the fact the CWM won't flash properly. You're trying to fix it by trying to flash a rom in HBOOT that isn't configured to be flashed that way. for example, i put the skyraider rom (named properly) in the root folder and tried to flash with HBOOT. it scanned and parsed but didn't give me the option to flash.

What I did was go here and grab a stock like image:
androidforums.com/thunderbolt-all-things-root/418539-thunderbolt-root-unroot-thread.html
(won't let me make a link, i'm too new)

Go to the "Putting current stock firmware and s-on back onto the phone" section.
Download file 1 and flash it using HBOOT. I had to pull my sd card to get the file on there since cwm was crashing. Only flash that rom and nothing else. It flashed for me; if it doesn't flash for you then maybe your HBOOT is corrupted, and if so i don't know if you can fix it.

Once that flashes, reboot the phone and it should return to some level of functionality. You'll have S-off but no recovery or root tools installed. I ran revolutionary at this point, which recognized i already had S-off...then it offered to load CWM. This i did. in the meantime i deleted the unrooted image and put the image of the rom i wanted on the sd card. i then booted into recovery(it won't flash in HBOOT) and loaded that rom (skyraider zeus). That worked fine and the cwm didn't crash out.

I hope this works for you. I was getting ready to fire back up my OG droid before i did this.

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I have read that post you provided probably 100 times its not working for me. flashing a custom rom actually got me past the HTC white screen and into a splash screen loop (Open Mobile). Also, I havent even been able to use the REV tool because my phone is not recognized by it without it being fully functional. you have to be fully booted up for the REV tool to use adb and start the process. thats why i need a signed copy of an older ROM with hboot flashing capability so i can fully restore my phone. i am 100% sure its a corruption issue, but i am out of clues as to how to actually get it to flash over while being s-on. with the evo shift it worked perfectly. it only took me 20 minutes to root, s-off and flash a custom rom. this phone has been a thorn in my side ever since i accepted that STUPID FOTA... i regret not knowing before hand what that OTA was and what it prevented. Now i know, too little / too late.

without s-off, i cant unlock hboot to flash it, and the fastboot mw whatever command failed also because its locked tight.

lemew said:

If your hboot is flashed with revolutionary I believe you have to unlock it before anything thing else can be flashed over that. Hboot or emmc could be corrupted as well.

Sent from my ADR6400L using xda app-developers app

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thats what i thought. is there a way to change out that eMMC, or remove it to format it manually? i mean based on the description, its technically external which implies removable.

lemew said:

Yes you can format emmc I do not know if this will solve your problem. You wipe abd format through adb but need to see if it is being mounted first.

Sent from my ADR6400L using xda app-developers app

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too bad i cannot repartition it to allow for more RAM instead of app space. i dont care about app space because i have a 32gb card... lol. i just want that phone to be faster than what it is currently once i finally get it running.