[TUT] Unbricking your Cavalier

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Everything you ever needed to know about "unbricking" your Cavalier but were afraid to ask is in this guide. I've put together this little guide for those of you who either intentionally or unintentionally bricked your Cavalier. There are three methods you can use depending of the severity of the "bricking".

But, before I even get into that, if your phone is in fact working right now, I highly recommend you flash HardSPL to avoid even having to follow these steps anytime in the future. The steps and info for HardSPL and JumpSPL can be found in this thread by jockyw2001:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=398945

HardSPL basically flashes your phone with an "unlocked" security partition so all security checks are bypassed when you try to flash a cooked ROM or a ROM designed for another variation of the Cavalier such as Dopod, HTC, or Softbank. Makes life much easier when trying different ROMS or cooking and testing your own! Thanks jockyw2001!!

Ok, so onto the fun stuff... You flashed your phone and it won't boot. What do you do??

First and easiest way to try unbricking is:

• Get a hold of your Shipped ROM. If your Cavalier is a Dopod, you can find these ROMS either in Dopod's site, HTC's site (with a valid serial #), or right here at XDA (ftp://xda:xda@ftp.xda-developers.com...Updates/Dopod/)
• Remove the SD card if one is inserted in the phone
• Remove the battery from your phone for a few seconds. I found this step to be essential to reset the device. Put the battery back in.
• While holding the camera button on the right side, press the power button. The phone will enter "bootloader" mode and you will see a tricolor bootscreen.
• While in this mode, plug in your USB cable and you will hear the "ba-bing" USB sounds as the device connects
• Unpack the ROM package you just downloaded and run RomUpdateUtility.exe. Follow the steps, check the appropriate boxes, and start the flash
• Assuming all goes well, your phone will flash to the factory ROM and you can then troubleshoot what went wrong the first time that bricked your phone.

What if this doesn't work?? Or what if it flashes but the phone still doesn't boot. Or what if the flash stalls or fails? Don't panic!! That's the worst thing you can do. Try this next step.

The second mothod to unbricking your phone is:

• You will need to download some tools. Downlload MTTY from this post and unpack it.
• Remove your SD card
• Use the method above to put your phone into "bootloader" mode and connect the USB cable
• Go into Activesync and under File, Connections, uncheck "Allow USB Connections" and hit ok. Activesync will now show a red X in the systray icon
• Now, launch MTTY and for port, select "USB" or \\.\WCEUSBSH001 (or any variation) and hit connect. Tap enter a few times to get the Cmd> prompt. If you don't get the prompt, review the steps and try again.
• Next run the following commands to check for bad blocks and format you OS partition:

 
Cmd>task 32
(if you get Level=0 you are good to go)
 
Cmd>info 8
(This will give you bad block information if any)
 
Cmd>task 32
 
Cmd>task 2a
(Let this run and check for bad blocks, may take a while)
 
Cmd>task 28
(This will reformat your storage partition, if you get "Storage format success" you're in business)

• Now flash back your shipped Cavalier ROM and you should be good

Oh no!! That didn't work!? Or it worked but the flash failed with Error 270 or another error......... Never fear!! XDA-Developers is here! This next method creates a "goldcard" which is used to SuperCID the Cavalier so that it doesn't care about what factory ROM you flash. Please have the factory (not a cooked) ROM ready to go.

The third "goldcard" an final method is a bit more intensive so follow closely:

• Get a cup of coffee or tea
• You will need a working Donor HTC device with a microSD slot and a microSD card that is smaller than 1GB (will be formatted) to create "goldcard" image using QMAT tools as described below
• You will need QMAT. Get it from http://revskills.de/index.html.
• Go to the Download link and download the latest version and unpack QMAT
• Have some coffee
• Use a SD card reader in your PC to access the SD card through Windows. Format the SD card with FAT32.
• * Insert the SD card into the donor HTC device and connect the USB cable. If you unchecked "Allow USB Connections" in Activesync in an earlier step, make sure you recheck it so that you can establish a full USB sync connection to the HTC device.
• Open QMAT and go to the "Hardware Forecsics" menu and select "Generate HTC Goldcard"
• In "Select device key:" select the Cavalier
• You will need the serial number fro the SD card so click the "Get SD Card Serial from WINCE Device" button
• Once the Serial number appears in the box, click the "Save Goldcard Image to WINCE SD" button below
• If no errors pop up and all goes well, proceed to these next steps
• If you get an error or a popup saying "Goldcard for newer devices isn't implemented in newer devices", you must buy and register the software. Believe me, it's worth the small amount of $ you will spend to bring your expensive device back to life!
• Now remove the SD card with the newly written Goldcard image from the Donor HTC device
• Insert the SD card back into your PC using the microSD card reader adapter. Browse to the drive letter assigned to it. You will see no files on the SD card, this is normal.
• (If, for some reason your PC sees the SD card as unformatted, something went wrong. Remove it and reinsert it into the Donor HTC device. The device should see the card as unformatted and ask you to format it, say yes. Now go back to the "* Insert the SD card into the donor HTC device" step above and repeat the steps)
• Unpack your Dopod or other factory ROM and copy RUU_Signed.nbh to the SD card. Once it had finished copying, rename the file to CAVAIMG.nbh. Remove the SD card from the PC.
• Make sure the Cavalier is off and insert the SD card
• Enter bootloader mode as mentioned earlier (hold the camera button while pressing the power button)
• You will see a gray screen that says "loading". It will then find the CAVAIMG.nbh file and ask if you would like to start the update process. Follow the instructions and let the phone flash.
• It will take 10-15 mins but your phone should boot fine and be back in action!

QMAT is a VERY powerful tool written by viperbjk that allows for full low level manipulation of HTC and WINCE tasks. Read all about it here http://revskills.de/index.html.

Many thanks to jockyw2001 for his amazing HTC device knowledge! Also thanks to all who contributed to this post.

Hope this tutorial helps!

Reserved for updates.

Mtty for Vista :

Very good, thanks man.
If you don't mind, ask the mods to sticky this thread as it is nice tutorial. link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=276306

Cheers

Great post! Will check out QMAT though I haven't needed it yet (thankfully.)

What is the use of this?To solve the problem of bricks

Originally Posted by pl879

What is the use of this?To solve the problem of bricks

Yes, if your phone doesn't boot or a flash failed. This tutorial will help revive your phone.

hi,ookba
I have a idea,cooking SP-PPC 6.5 ROM for cava,Try to solve the Homescreen layout problem....
I tried, but cooking no avail

Originally Posted by pl879

hi,ookba
I have a idea,cooking SP-PPC 6.5 ROM for cava,Try to solve the Homescreen layout problem....
I tried, but cooking no avail

To get a "Pro" PPC SYS to boot on a SP is a lot of work. I got it to work once but majorly buggy. You have to remove any and all touchscreen drivers and apps as well. Not easy... The more I learn, the more I realize that the homescreen issue is hardware related with the way the new 21XXX core and up accesses hardware. I think that's why HTC abondoned the Cav so early. WM 6.1 19XXX is probably the best we're gonna get on t he CAV.

Need help

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I have tried 2/3 methods all thats left is the gold card method but i dont have a working dash. Is there any way someone can send me the files necessary to make it without having the working dash?