Cooking Helmi in BuildOS 9.05

[Arterion]

Hey guys,

I have been a long-time fan of ppcgeeks.com. I've had my Apache for over 2 years now, and it's pretty much never ran Sprint's ROM.

Being windows, I feel the need to cook up a new ROM every few months. I set out to do so last week with the newest build for Apache (2074. As it turns out, that build was pretty much unusable for me. There is a services.exe bug, some users report HTC Home doesn't work, .NET problems, and more.

I ended up going back to the earlier Helmi release, which is still included in BuildOS 9.05. However, it doesn't work without a little hacking. I thought I'd share what I had to do, for anyone else who needs to go back from 20748.

First, you need to change the path to the OEM rar. It was changed from "PPCGeeks_OEM.rar" to "PPCkitchen_OEM.rar". Just open the "Apache_Helmi_WM6.1 Selections.txt" in notepad and change the following line:

OptionalModuleDir=Kitchens\PPCGeeks_OEM.rar:

To:

OptionalModuleDir=Kitchens\PPCkitchen_OEM.rar:

You will still get some errors when you load the helmi selection file, but it is okay to ignore them.

HOWEVER, the .Net CF 3.5 is NOT included by default in Helmi. What you need to do is add it to the OEM rar. In order to do this, you need to open the "SYS_20748_Apache.rar" file and copy the "NetCF3.5" folder out.

1. Open \Kitchens\SYS_20748_Apache.rar
2. Copy the NetCF3.5 folder to a temporary location.
3. Open \Kitchens\PPCkitchen_OEM.rar
4. Copy the NetCF2.0 folder to a temporary location.
5. Copy option.xml from the NetCF2.0 folder to the NetCF3.5 folder.
6. Open \NetCF3.5\option.xml in notepad
6. Change the following lines:

<Guid type="p">58f43c9f-bc38-430e-81d1-a2e6c650f225</Guid>
To:
<Guid type="p">38f43c9f-bc38-430e-81d1-a2e6c650f225</Guid>
And
<Item name=".NET CF 2.0" group="NETCF" checked="False">
To:
<Item name=".NET CF 3.5" group="NETCF" checked="True">

7. Add the NetCF3.5 folder to \Kitchens\PPCkitchen_OEM.rar
8. Select Apache_Helmi_WM6.1 Selections.txt from BuildOS
9. Ignore the errors
10. Check that the .NET 3.5 CF is listed in BuildOS. It should be selected by default.

On my Apache, this build is exceptionally stable and fast. The only issue I have is that applications installed on the EXT_ROM will occasionally not run, with an error that the application is not signed. I suspect this is due to the EXT_ROM not being a "trusted location" for code to run. I'm pretty sure it's related to .net apps, and that a registry tweak will fix it. When I figure it out, I'll update this post.