Phone will not boot. Unable to access Recovery.

[windserpent]

First some quick backstory: I was experiencing the the "Low Storage" issue that seems to plague some DInc devices and not letting me access SMS threads returning a low storage message. I was trying to free up some space and uninstalled Adobe AIR from my phone. Afterwards it started kinda freaking out and throwing up multiple FCs for things like Market, Google Service Processor, Amazon MP3, and some others that seemed kinda important. It has done this a couple times in the past; a reboot has always fixed it. So I reboot. Now the phone is stuck in a bootloop that loops shortly after the initial "htc Incredible" screen. I don't want to factory reset since I am dumb and have not backed up in a bit, so I figure I'll try updating to the new 2.3 (the "fixed" one) for the DInc and see if it will fix the bootloop I'm in. Downloaded it, copied it to the card, but when I try to get into Recovery, my phone reboots. I had Clockwork on there previously, but it seems to have gone AWOL. So my questions are this:

Can I flash a recovery image to my phone someway even though I am bootlooped?

If not, can I access the recovery console through an alternate method?

If not, am I stuck with doing a factory reset or is there some way to fix this that my searching has failed to find?

 

[ghess517]

Prepare for a factory reset. Somewhat similar issues here. Get update file renamed to update.zip, not update.zip.zip. may have to do battery pulls and hboot a couple times. This I what I went through before I could get mine to access update.zip and reload. Part of problem of bootloop is the fastboot option is probably checked and system never fully shuts down. If ever it does, it will factory reset. Hopefully you didn't have 100 plus apps and did have at least one semi current Google contacts sync.
Good luck.

 

[windserpent]

I do have "fastboot" above "recovery". Does that mean I'm pretty much SOL?

 

[PvilleComp]

You can download either the 5.0.2.0 or 3.0.0.8 Clockwork recoveries here:
Recoveries | PvilleComp's
Be sure to check the MD5 and rename them to PB31IMG.zip (Don't add a .zip if you do not see one on your PC, it's already there) Then flash it in HBOOT. Then you should be able to get into recovery.

Once in recovery, clear your cache and dalvic cache (Not data yet) and see if you can boot.

Hope this helps.

 

[windserpent]

PvilleComp,

Thank you for the suggestion!

I followed the directions to flash the recovery image on. I started with CWM 5. The update seemed to apply, but my phone still rebooted after selecting Recovery in HBOOT. I tried flashing CWM 3 (broken on your site, but found an alternate download source), and the stock recovery. All three did the same thing.

I think my phone is probably hosed unless you or anyone else reading this have any other suggestions. I'll wait a few more hours to see if there are any posts and then just suck it up and factory reset...

 

[PvilleComp]

Thanks for the heads up on 3.0.0.8 - it's fixed now.

I'd try the factory reset at this point - if that does not work - try the RUU back to Froyo and then re-root.

Hope this helps.

 

[windserpent]

Well, I think my phone may have become a masonry unit.

I did the factory reset, but the phone continued to bootloop. So I tried the PB31IMG.zip Froyo flash next. All six pieces seemed to apply correctly (all gave "OK"), but the phone continued to bootloop. I tried it a second time to be sure and got the same effect. I ran the Froyo RUU next. It completed successfully (or at least reported it did), but the phone continues to bootloop. Always loops a few seconds after the initial "hTC Incredible" splash screen. An odd thing I noticed is that throughout this whole time including after the RUU, my phone contines to report s-off at the top of the bootloader. I'm not sure if that is important, but I would have thought that should have changed if the images were getting applied correctly. Especially after the RUU was applied.

Do you have any other possible suggestions?