Recovery Mode

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I have two Verizon Motorola Droid A855's that I want to turn into iPod Touch alternatives since I already own them. The phones will not have an active phone plan, so no 3G, I'll be using Wi-Fi only. This has worked fine, I am able to setup a Google account, install apps, etc. One is working great, the other is giving me fits. I have several problems with it. At this point both phones are running FRK76 (2.2.3). The one that works right updated itself OTA. The other one was at 2.2 and wouldn't update itself to 2.2.3, so I tried doing it via recovery mode and this is where my adventure started.

PROBLEM #1: Can't enter original recovery mode.

I can get into the original recovery mode normally on one of the phones, the other will not show the menu. I use Power+X buttons, the exclamation point graphic shows up, I press VolumeUp+Camera buttons and nothing happens. Works fine on the other one. I've tried the other key combos that are meant for other Droids just in case, nothing happens. I have verified the buttons work. I've also read that if I SBF back to some original rom (I've tried ESD20, FRG83G and FRK76 that I got from Peter Alfonso's site) that it will restore the original recovery mode. It has not helped. No matter what I've tried so far VolumeUp+Camera will not bring up the original recovery menu. I've been searching, and searching and nothing seems to work.

PROBLEM #2: Is there a way to activate the phone after SBF without having a Verizon phone plan?

I was able to root the phone using SuperOneClick, install Droid 2 Bootstraper, and ROM Manager. I used ROM Manager to Flash ClockworkMod Recovery 2.5.0.1 and then pressed Reboot into Recovery in ROM Manager and upon reboot I can get to a recovery menu.

That all being said, I've yet to install a ROM from within recovery that makes the phone work correctly. So, I moved on to doing SBF and ran into other problems. After any SBF install I now get a dark grey triangle in the status bar. I'm pretty sure this means I'm in roaming mode becasue I need to activate the phone using *228 option 1. The problem is that I do not have an active plan for this phone anymore so it won't activate, it asks me to enter the 10 digit phone # of the phone. I tried putting in 123-123-1234 and obviously that doesn't work, it starts to send me to customer service. At this point I just hang up.

PROBLEM #3: SBF'ed phone won't update stock apps.

After I did an SBF on the problem phone and setup a Google account on it, I then used the old Market to install any simple app. Once that is done Market updates itself to Play Store. I enter Play Store and it should show me all a list of the stock apps under the INSTALLED screen plus any available updates to the stock apps, like Facebook, Twitter, Maps, Play Music. Overnight these apps did finally show up under the ALL screen of Play Store, but they just say "Installed" and when I click on one there is no Update button, only open. None of the stock apps show up under INSTALLED. The phone thinks the newest versions of these apps is already installed, but they aren't. I am not sure what to do about this. I would like to be able to update to the newest stock apps (well, most of them). I keep reusing the same Google account on this problem phone, so maybe setting up a new account might work?

This was a long post, it seems around here shorter posts get answered but then people always ask for more info. So, I just gave the info upfront. Hope there is some help or suggestions out there. Thanks!

Problem #2 is a non-issue. You said it will not be active on a line, so there is absolutely no need to do a *228 on the phone. In fact, you will get better battery life if you turn off the cellular radio putting it into airplane mode. Wi-fi will still work if you turn it on after it's in airplane mode.