Simple steps to flashing your own rom

[cornelious2]

Hey guys, I have seen so many people having troubles (myself included) trying to grasp the concepts of flashing a custom rom. I still am no expert by any means, but I think that very fact helps this situation. to all the experts out there, if I list something that is out of place/blatantly wrong please let me know so I can fix it.

Note: Make sure you backup all contacts and information you want to keep before you upgrade your rom as you will lose all of that information if you don't.

THIS GUIDE IS INTENDED TO OUTLINE THE STEPS IN SIMPLE LANGUAGE IT IS NOT INTENDED TO BE A DETAILED END ALL BE ALL IF YOU BREAK YOUR PHONE YOU DID SO AT YOUR OWN RISK AND I WILL NOT BE HELD LIABLE

STEP 1
First off you will need the latest SPL (or boot loader) on your phone, you can get that from these forums quite easily. http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=9093 contains the one you install via a pc (olipro 2.40) but many seem to like the new one no2chem created which allows you to reload the stock SPL. Currently I use this one(nueSPL), it is MUCH easier to use, but be warned, you will have to format a micro sd card to fat 32 before it will work. if you have lots of nice stuff on your sd card, back it up before doing this. http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=30561 This one (nueSPL 2.47) can be installed like a normal cab file, so it would be much easier.

Verizon (or other non sprint) users take note, the following is the critical point for you. When you flash the new rom, you will either need to use the sd method, and pull just the latest radio rom off the FTP here, or if you use the latest sprint rom, you MUST restart the phone before the customizations run. Basically as soon as you see the htc splash screen push the reset button at the bottom of the phone with your stylus.

STEP 2
So now you have a stock phone with a different bootloader, are you excited yet?! If not you should be. The next step is to download the latest sprint rom You can get it from htc's website. this is the exe file that does the rom flashing for you. If you have not run it on your phone yet do so now. just connect your phone, wait a couple seconds and run the exe. the wizard will guide you through the process. Congrats you now have the latest radio on your phone and windows 6.1. make sure you save that exe file you will need it again at the next step.

STEP 3
After you have the latest radio on your phone, now its time for the (mildly) tricky part. make sure you have winrar installed on your computer. if you dont have it you can download it from www.winrar.com. This is not technically freeware but, if you can deal with a couple nag screens it is effectively free, though if you continue to use it, I recommend supporting the developers by purchasing it. Turbofool also lists 7zip which is free, but I personally like how winrar is laid out. once you have that(winrar or 7zip) installed, open that exe with winrar or 7zip (right click the file and click open with winrar) and you will see alot of files. make a new folder on your desktop and extract all of those files into your new folder. there will be a file called RUU_signed.nbh this file contains the actual rom for your phone. This will be your RUU folder many other posts reference.

STEP 4
Now that you have this folder with all of these files you are almost home free!!! Find whichever custom rom file from here the ftp is ftp://up.ppcgeeks.com then navigate to Titan and then Users from there select the person that created the rom you would like to try no2chem makes a great rom, but he goes for the minimalist approach, and you will have to find cab files for many of the applications you like, this is good if you want your phone to run as fast as possible and you dont mind installing a few cabs after you get your phone up and running. Currently I am using SBR_L3GION's v3 loaded rom, and I am quite the happy camper I must say.

STEP 5 activesync method
But I digress. download one of the roms which will most likely be a .rar file once its on your computer unrar the file and you will get a file that could be named RUU_signed.nbh or anythingelse.nbh if it is not named RUU_signed.nbh rename it to RUU_signed.nbh and then copy that file into the folder you created. now this is important, make sure you overwrite the original RUU_signed.nbh file that was in there, in fact you might be better off deleting the RUU_signed.nbh file from the folder and then copying the new rom file into the folder.

This is the fun part. connect your phone to your pc again and click on the file RomUpdateUtility.exe. if you followed my steps correctly you will be greeted with the wizard you used to upgrade your phone before. Just follow the steps and your phone will update.

STEP 5 (Alternate)
An alternate method to installing the custom roms after you have the latest radio and boot loader would be to have a micro SD card formatted to the fat32 file system. at this point put the nbh file on the card in its root directory (in no folders) and name the file TITAIMG.nbh. once this is done hold the power button and camera button while using the stylus to softreset the phone, this will bring it into boot loader mode and will update the rom. Not all sd cards seem to be compatible with this method, so if you have issues just use the method above. If you do a search for a program called pocketrar, you can download the roms directly to your phone and try updating them without having to connect to your pc. otherwise, you will need to active sync the file over, and as we know if you have vista that can be a major issue. though for some reason the RUU folder method can still seem to see the phone usually.

YOUR PHONE WILL FREEZE WHEN IT TRIES TO TURN ON AFTER THE UPDATE.

To solve this all you need to do is pull the battery and put it back in and you will be good to go.

Congrats!! you now have yourself a custom rom, if you save the folder you created, from this point on you just need to put a new RUU_signed.nbh file into that folder and run the RomUpdateUtility.exe to change to a different one, play with them, as many roms are quite different and will suit different users.

Thanks for this guide go to the great posters at ppcgeeks, especially no2chem, turbofool, Gamedic, Puff and Banzai wolf.

[TurboFool]

Just a few thoughts that might improve your guide:

Branching out to no2chem's nueSPL would actually be EASIER than the Olipro one. Since it can be run from the phone, it requires no sync cable, no potential Vista driver issues, and is OS-independent. I recommend it anyway.

As far as opening the EXE, that seems kind of tricky to me for the average person. There are pre-zipped empty RUUs on the FTP site all over the place. Maybe search one of those out and point the users to it, instead. That said, WinRAR isn't a free program, nor an especially friendly one. I'd strongly recommend 7-Zip as an alternative. Free, open-source (if I'm not mistaken), simple, and integrates well with the command shell. You can just right-click the EXE and extract it.

As well, I find once you have the phone unlocked, flashing from a memory card is 10x easier than through an RUU, and drastically more convenient. Just make sure the card is formatted as FAT32 (which should already be done if you used nueSPL), rename the RUU_signed.nbh to TITAIMG.nbh, throw it in the root of the card, and enter the bootloader (Power+Camera+Soft-Reset buttons) and follow the instructions. Much faster, much smoother, and again, no dependence on iffy ActiceSync connections or unsupported OSes.

[cornelious2]

Originally Posted by TurboFool

Just a few thoughts that might improve your guide:

Branching out to no2chem's nueSPL would actually be EASIER than the Olipro one. Since it can be run from the phone, it requires no sync cable, no potential Vista driver issues, and is OS-independent. I recommend it anyway.

As far as opening the EXE, that seems kind of tricky to me for the average person. There are pre-zipped empty RUUs on the FTP site all over the place. Maybe search one of those out and point the users to it, instead. That said, WinRAR isn't a free program, nor an especially friendly one. I'd strongly recommend 7-Zip as an alternative. Free, open-source (if I'm not mistaken), simple, and integrates well with the command shell. You can just right-click the EXE and extract it.

As well, I find once you have the phone unlocked, flashing from a memory card is 10x easier than through an RUU, and drastically more convenient. Just make sure the card is formatted as FAT32 (which should already be done if you used nueSPL), rename the RUU_signed.nbh to TITAIMG.nbh, throw it in the root of the card, and enter the bootloader (Power+Camera+Soft-Reset buttons) and follow the instructions. Much faster, much smoother, and again, no dependence on iffy ActiceSync connections or unsupported OSes.

I agree that once the phone is unlocked it is more convenient to flash from the sd card, but I was really aiming this guide to list the most solid ways to upgrade. given that some people seem to have alot of trouble with that method, I wanted to focus on the methods that have the least issues.

Thanks for all the tips I have updated accordingly.

If anyone else has any comments let me know, like if I shoudl shift any wording or what not

[cornelious2]

Fixed a few spelling/grammar errors

[banzaiwolfe]

One thing I wanted to say about Olipro 2.40 as well, it will not install on Vista 64-bit as it comes. The only way to get it to work is to edit the batch file because one of the applications that's listed in it, Sleep4, is a 16-bit program (incompatible with 64-bit Windows). In a case where you're running 64-bit Windows, no2chem's program is going to be your best option if you don't really know what you're doing.

[cornelious2]

Is there anyone out there that hasn't flashed their phone before that found anything here helpful/confusing?

[banzaiwolfe]

Originally Posted by cornelious2

Is there anyone out there that hasn't flashed their phone before that found anything here helpful/confusing?

I'm sure there will be people that won't know what they're doing and will read this. I just wanted to bring this up because I was just recently able to get Olipro 2.40 to install through 64-bit Windows, it's frustrating when you're new to flashing and don't know why it's not working, as was my case

[GoldenTiger]

I'm likely buying a Verizon XV6800 shortly, so I have this bookmarked for later. Thanks!

[cornelious2]

Originally Posted by banzaiwolfe

I'm sure there will be people that won't know what they're doing and will read this. I just wanted to bring this up because I was just recently able to get Olipro 2.40 to install through 64-bit Windows, it's frustrating when you're new to flashing and don't know why it's not working, as was my case

Yea, It took me over a month of reading the stickies and posts before I was comfortable doing this, I think sometimes once the process is realized to be super easy, we loose the point of reference the newbies have coming into this and kind of gloss over parts that we think could be assumed, so I was trying to make this as simple step by step oriented as possible. How did you go about getting olipro working on 64 bit vista? I guess with the nuespl its not as important, but still might be worth noting.

[cornelious2]

Originally Posted by GoldenTiger

I'm likely buying a Verizon XV6800 shortly, so I have this bookmarked for later. Thanks!

If you have any issues ill be watching this thread, or you can always pm me and ill get to it usually within a couple hours, if not the next morning.