Paul Richards

This is a quick guide on how to root your 3 (three UK) branded HTC Desire and add a custom recovery if you wish to load custom roms.

Before we start here are some details about my phone which i did this process on:

• HTC Desire simlock to 3 UK
• Software version 1.22.771.1
• HBOOT 0.80.0000
• Did this on Windows 7

You have 3 choices on what you can do here:

1. Put a custom recovery on it to flash any rom you like
2. Gain root access your current Eclair 2.1 (and a custom recovery if you like)
3. Upgrade it to offical Froyo 2.2

First we  must ‘debrand’ our phone, this is a process where we load a generic rom that shipped with the sim-free Desires. These are all version 1.21.x all of which contain ways to root the phone. If you read up on how to root these phones you notices it says ‘this only works if you have 1.21.x or below), well the goal of this to downgrade to that lower number.

PLEASE READ EVERYTHING CAREFULLY I CANNOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR BROKEN PHONES.

Create a ‘gold card’  – A GoldCard is a special SD card which, when inserted into your device, allows you to flash RUU files with a different CID to your own device. So we own a 3UK branded device, this will allow you to flash a generic ROM.

Requirements

• Spare microSD card
• Windows PC (recommended)
• ADB (part of the tools folder of the SDK, available for download here
• HxD Hex Editor, available for download here

Step by step instructions

• Format the microSD card to FAT32 format.
• Put the microSD card in your device and boot it.
• Ensure you have unzipped the SDK, then open a command prompt to the extract location. Change to the ‘tools directory.
• Enter ‘adb shell cat /sys/class/mmc_host/mmc1/mmc1:*/cid’ and press enter. You should get a very long number which looks like this: 532600bd227d9c0347329407514d5402.
• Visit this page, paste in your number and reverse it. In our example the result would be 00544d5107943247039c7d22bd002653.
• Visit this page, enter your reversed number and create your goldcard image, which will be e-mailed to you.
• Open the HxD hex editor. If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you must run the application as administrator.
• Go to the ‘Extra’ menu and select ‘Open Disk’. Under physical disk, select Removable Disk (your microSD card), uncheck ‘Open as Readonly’ and click OK. Note that you should select physical disk NOT the logical disk. This is important!
• Go to the ‘Extra’ menu again and select ‘Open Disk Image’. Open the goldcard image that you received by email.
• You should now have two tabs – one is your removable disk, the other is your goldcard image. Press OK when prompted for ‘Sector Size’ (selecting 512 (Hard disks/Floppy disks)) and click OK.
• Click on the goldcard image tab. Go to the ‘Edit’ menu, choose ‘Select All’ then select the ‘Edit’ menu again and select ‘Copy’.
• Click on the ‘Removable Disk’ tab. Highlight offset (line) 00000000 to offset (line) 00000170 (including the 00000170 line), then click on the ‘Edit’ menu and select ‘Paste Write’.
• Click on the ‘File’ menu and select ‘Save’, accepting the warning.

Ok here the bit that differs for us 3UK branded people. If you have a branded handset other then 3UK at this point you run a gernic RUU found here. 3UK owners must go through a couple more steps.

Download the unrevoked3 rooting package from here http://paulsrichards.com/files/downloads/desire-rooting/reflash_package.exe (the one i used) or download it from http://unrevoked.com/#desire. This software will flash a custom recovery onto your phone. If your having driver problem ensure you follow the instructions that come with it properly. It has its own set for bootloader that it must use. If you having issues with the program finding your desire, try plugging in the desire before you load the program (even though it says not to do this). I had to do that to get it to work. Note that it loads a default recovery you can change this by clicking the file menu, i did this and used recovery-RA-desire-v1.7.0.1-R5.img found here. As i’ve rooted a Magic and Hero in the past i felt more at home with that one.

NOTE THIS PROCESS WILL COMPLETLY WIPE OUT YOUR PHONE  – ENSURE YOU HAVE IT BACKED IT UP.

Ok now you can get into your new custom recovery by turning off the phone, hold the back button + the power. Select ‘BOOTLOADER’ then ‘RECOVERY’. It will then reboot to recovery.

Now at this point you can say the hard work is done and load a custom ROM which is Froyo 2.2 offical. I’ve currently got ‘Rooted Official HTC Android 2.2 (FroYo) ROM’ from here (look around on XDA there are loads to try out). And away you go offical 2.2 on your phone.

But you can carry on and do it the other way (i’m not sure why you would want to do that now but here goes).

Place this zip (found here for ref) on your Sd card and ‘Flash a Zip’ in recovery.

Now your phones thinks its an older version then it is. Download a gernic unbranded RUU found here.

Possible problems

• When running RUU it reboots into BOOTLOADER and cant find the phone – turn on your phone as normal, plug it in with USB debugging mode on, with the SDK run on the command line ‘adb reboot oem-78′. Then it will go into the mode the RUU whats it to, then check all the drivers are ok in the ‘Hardware Devices’ in my computer.It should say ‘HTC Bootloader’. Then while in that mode run the RUU.
• If you get while in RUU ‘Wrong CUSTOMER ID’ – you gold card is bad, do it again.
• If you get while in RUU ‘BOOTLOADER VERSION INCORRECT’ – you haven’t flashed the update.zip properly.

Easy! you know have a downgrade phone!

Now to root it you can do the following (guide from XDA):

NOTE: for step one it depends which generic RUU you decided to put on, please check what you got by going into HBOOT (power off, back button + power).

1. Download Tiny Core Linux Live CD
   —- For a bootloader of 0.75.* or lower AND a current ROM of 1.15.* or lower Download
   —- For a bootloader of 0.80.* or lower AND a current ROM of 1.21.* or lower Download
   
2. Burn the downloaded iso on CD/DVD
3. Boot your computer from that CD/DVD, once you booted it will ask you to press Enter or F2/F3 keys, you need to press Enter
4. Insert the goldcard into the phone.
5. Start the HTC Desire in bootloader by holding back and turning it on by the power button
6. Connect the USB cable to the phone and PC
7. Open a terminal by clicking the icon that looks like a monitor at the bottom on Tiny Core Linux and type the following commands:
   Code:

   sudo mkdir /mnt/cdrom
   sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
   cd /mnt/cdrom/desire
   sudo ./step1.sh

8. Wait until the phone restarts back into the white bootloader screen
9. Turn the phone off via the bootloader menu (or pull the battery and USB cable) and remove the goldcard. Put a non-goldcard SD into the phone or reformat the goldcard and put it into the phone. Put the phone back into bootloader mode (Press Power button and Back button).
10. In terminal type the following command:
    Code:

    sudo ./step2.sh

11. Once the phone has finished, you will see a screen with a green text. Use the optical tracker to navigate the menu to select Wipe and then press Wipe data/factory reset
12. Once complete you should be back in the main menu. Now select the option Flash zip from sdcard and than choose rootedupdate.zip
13. Once back in the main menu, choose restart the phone – the rooting process is now finished

IF YOU WISH TO UPGRADE TO OFFICAL FROYO DO THIS BUT IT WILL UNROOT YOUR PHONE AND MAY MAKE IT SO CAN NEVER ROOT IT AGAIN. I WOULD SUGGEST YOU DO WHAT I DID ABOVE

(guide is from here)

Next you need to download the FroYo update file which you can find here [Mirror - the file has already been renamed to update.zip], once you have done this rename the file update.zip and copy it to the root of your microSD.  Turn your phone off then do the following:

• Turn your phone on whilst holding down the volume down button to enter the HBoot menu
• Choose the Recovery option by using the volume down button and the power button to select, your phone should then restart in recovery mode where you’ll be greeted with a red triangle and exclamation mark
• Press and hold the volume up button and press the power button once, then choose to apply update.zip at the next menu
• The FroYo update will now take place during which time your phone will reboot several times, the whole process takes about 10 minutes
• Once you have booted up into FroYo and configured your settings, copy your files back onto your microSD card and you are good to go!