I got stuck in a boot loop when I tried flashing cwm (this was before I realised we had the one XL lol)
Holding the power button would reset it, then after a few minutes, it'd somehow get back into the loop by itself
I ended up leaving it on fastboot until I figured out I had to flash the boot.img from the stock AT&T RUU.
I honestly really don't like Sense, hopefully it won't be long before unskinned roms show up
with your description it sounds like we're safe
maybe. with htc dev or other i'm thinking yes. HTC isn't quite as difficult as Moto.
