Help Much Appreciated!

[Ken_FSU]

Hi guys,

I sold my HTC Incredible in order to buy the Droid X. After using the X for two days though, I realized just how much I loved the Incredible and immediately decided to switch back. So I placed an ad on Craiglist looking for a trade. I met a guy this morning, traded his Incredible for my X, and brought the phone home and activated it. Everything seemed to be working fine until I went to send a text message and noticed that the HTC messaging program wasn't installed on the phone. The HTC mail program is missing as well. Then I noticed the superuser and Wifi tether programs in the app drawer.

I know literally nothing about rooting a phone, but from listening to the podcast, I know that I was sold a rooted phone.

I'm sure there are a million great reasons to root, but I'm terrified of either bricking the phone, or needing to file an insurance claim and being denied because of the root. Plus, I really like the HTC mail and messaging apps, and would like to be able to receive working updates for the phone.

Does anyone know if there is an easy, safe way to either a) restore the phone to it's pre-root state, or b) at least get the mail and message programs back? Would a factory reset accomplish either of these goals.

Thanks guy, I love the site and would be deeply grateful for any advice.

 

[bespinct]

Hi Ken,

The best way to restore you phone would be to restore a 'stock" rom. You can download one here. You will need to copy the .zip file to the SD Card. Download ROM Manager from the Market if it isn't already on the phone, make a backup, and load the stock rom. I found ROM Manager to be pretty easy to use, but if you have any questions about how to backup and restore, make another post and I'll try to help you out.

Steve in CT

 

[Qazme]

Or simply boot the phone into recovery, volume down + power then select recovery, and I'm hoping the guys was smart enough to make a nandroid backup before he removed things. Could save you some grief. Like bespinct said let us know if you need anymore help.

 

[Ken_FSU]

Thanks guys. Since I've posted this, I've also discovered that attempting to record video causes the phone to crash and reboot, and also that the YouTube app and Skyfire don't play back video.

Unfortunately, there was no nandroid backup.

Here's where I'm currently at:

- I downloaded the Stock 2.1 ROM and placed it on my SD card in the Clockwork/Backup folder.

- I opened ROM Manager. After being prompted to flash ClockWorkModRecovery and selecting my phone, I chose "Install ROM from SD Card" and pointed to clockworkmod/backup/stock2.1.zip

- I selected "Wipe Data and Cache," hit ok, and then press ok again to reboot into ClockworkMod Recovery to continue the installation.

- The android progress bar goes through some motions, and then I'm taken to the ClockworkMod Recovery menu.

- I select "Install Zip from SD Card", followed by "Choose Zip from SD card," and again point to the location of the stock2.1.zip file. I'm asked to confirm install, and scroll down to "Yes - Install stock2.1.zip".

- I get a mega quick progress bar (like a half second), and then am taken back to the ClockWorkMod menu, where I select "Reboot System Now."

- The phone boots like it's fresh out of the box, going through language and account setup.

- And then, as soon as my home screen comes up, the Sense wallpaper changes into a Jagermeister logo that reads "Jager Rom v 1.0." My mail and message programs are still missing, and the other bugs mentioned above are still there.

Any idea where I might be going wrong along the way?

Thanks, again, times a million.

 

[SLOflatlander]

on a side note i dont think rom manager has the same effects on an incredible due to nand being still locked. so that may be the problem. heres a quote that a guy posted on xda:

"On the Inc, NAND is locked. Outside of Unrevoked's reflash tool, NO ONE and NOTHING is flashing your recovery partition. When you invoke recovery through ROM Manager, it reboots and runs an update.zip that puts you into a fake (albeit fully functional) recovery. This does NOT FLASH your recovery partition. This fake recovery will be whatever version you have most recently downloaded through ROM Manager. If it was version 1, when you reboot through ROM Manager you would be in recovery version 1. This has NOTHING TO DO with whatever version you actually have flashed in your recovery partition. You can boot into your REAL recovery via 'adb reboot recovery' or by powering down and entering recovery through HBOOT"

idk could be relevant, just trying to help. i actually think you ended up lucky being sold an already rooted phone haha. i tried really hard to delete those two apps and had a ton of problems

 

[bespinct]

Hi Ken,

I'm not certain. Looks like you followed the steps I would. I'm downloading now and will let you know if the outcome is different.

Steve in CT

 

[bespinct]

Hi Ken,

Looks like it isn't a completely stock ROM, but not quite a full JagerROM either. Looking briefly through the forums over at XDA, I'm not finding anything that's purely a stock sense. The Blue and Red Sense ROMs are close, and the YASR ROM has the apps you want. I've posted links to them below. One thing to remember is that no ROM will get you unrooted. If you end up needing to use the insurance, go all out and make the phone unusable!

YASR

Blue ROM

After all this effort to go stock, are you starting to gain interest in exploring the various ROMs?

Steve in CT

 

[Qazme]

No.....all the widgets you are missing are Sense widgets and programs. You are downloading Sense ROMs that are STRIPED of everything possible for performance etc. If you want a truely Stock ROM get the Binny ROM from here. binny ROMS | incredible ROMS

It only has root and superuser installed and nothing removed. Everything else has stuff removed. However if you want your phone to run REALLY REALLY nice you will put the pmf YASR 1.2 ROM on there and never look back. It is a perfect 2.1 vanilla rom if you ask me

 

[Ken_FSU]

Thanks so much guys!

With your help, I'm back to stock with all of the HTC programs I was previously missing.

Video is still broken though. YouTube, Skyfire, and the built-in video player don't work, and the camcorder causes the Incredible to reboot when I try to use it. Could this be a hardware problem, or would you guess it to be software?

Steve, to answer your question, yes and no. It's cool to tinker around with the different ROMS, but at the end of the day, I'm a sucker for stability. This is my first Android phone, and I really like Sense. It's one of the main reasons I switched back to the Incredible from the Droid X. It could just be that I don't know what else is out there, but sense is super intuitive to me. I would totally be down for buying a second Android phone -- maybe an original Droid -- to trying out rooting and experimenting with, but my primary phone is such a lifeline for me that it makes me SUPER nervous when it's not running properly.

I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to check out that ROM for me man. And Qazme, thanks for pointing me toward Binny.

 

[Qazme]

Not an issue, friend. Have you put Binny on there and still have camera issues etc? When you install the ROMs you also need to wipe the cache/data directories or you may have weird things happen like you are talking about. Binny will put you back 100% stock but with root.

If you wiped etc before the binny install and still have issues you may have a bad phone.

 

[Ken_FSU]

Thanks again guys. I have wiped my phone completely, factory reset, and reverted back to (rooted) stock 2.1. I'm still experiencing the following issues though:

1) When I attempt to record video with the camcorder app, my phone freezes and then reboots.
2) When I use the YouTube app and click play on a video, the screen goes black. I hear audio, but get no video.
3) When I attempt to play video in Skyfire, I receive a "media error." No video plays.
4) When I try to play video through the HTC gallery app, I either get a force close or black screen with audio.

Anyone ever hear of this happening?

Even though reading this fine site has always made me quite curious about rooting, man, it is just such poor etiquette to sell someone a phone and not have the courtesy to tell them that you've rooted it.

 

[jared916]

No.....all the widgets you are missing are Sense widgets and programs. You are downloading Sense ROMs that are STRIPED of everything possible for performance etc. If you want a truely Stock ROM get the Binny ROM from here. binny ROMS | incredible ROMS

It only has root and superuser installed and nothing removed. Everything else has stuff removed. However if you want your phone to run REALLY REALLY nice you will put the pmf YASR 1.2 ROM on there and never look back. It is a perfect 2.1 vanilla rom if you ask me

but SENSE makes things so much prettier and better while not suffering from lag or anything. i hoenstly didnt like vanilla at all especially since i have an option. i cant think of one reason why i would want vanilla

 

[Qazme]

but SENSE makes things so much prettier and better while not suffering from lag or anything. i hoenstly didnt like vanilla at all especially since i have an option. i cant think of one reason why i would want vanilla

Coming from a power user, Sense runs nothing like Vanilla when you are stressing it. If you just use the phone you will never see a slow down with Sense. Besides who said anything about Vanilla being better, pmf is far from vanilla it still have pretty much what you need from sense with a better launcher. Each to his own it's not everyone's cup of tea going Vanilla.

 

[Ken_FSU]

Thanks again guys. I have wiped my phone completely, factory reset, and reverted back to (rooted) stock 2.1. I'm still experiencing the following issues though:

1) When I attempt to record video with the camcorder app, my phone freezes and then reboots.
2) When I use the YouTube app and click play on a video, the screen goes black. I hear audio, but get no video.
3) When I attempt to play video in Skyfire, I receive a "media error." No video plays.
4) When I try to play video through the HTC gallery app, I either get a force close or black screen with audio.

Anyone ever hear of this happening?

Even though reading this fine site has always made me quite curious about rooting, man, it is just such poor etiquette to sell someone a phone and not have the courtesy to tell them that you've rooted it.

Hi guys.

Well, I installed the newest Jager ROM (the one that works with the OTA), and every single one of the above mentioned problems now works perfectly.

Maybe this whole rooted thing isn't so bad after all

 

[Qazme]

Glad you got it up and running good Ken. Welcome to the dark side