Sunday, November 22, 2009

How to upgrade/install custom ROM (HTC Touch HD/Blackstone)

It seemed that lots of people are actually interested in custom ROMs or more known to be "cooked" ROM. There are 2 types of ROM, namely Official ROM and Custom/Cooked ROM.
The official ROM is the ROM you get when you first purchase your device. The cooked ROM is actually ROMs which are made (cooked) by other developers which enhances, upgrades and tweaks the official ROM. This in turn make the cooked ROM more efficient and most importantly fast!

Before we proceed, this are the several preparations required:
  • battery level >70%
  • Windows XP systems
  • USB cable
  • USPL 2.5 version bootloader
  • cooked ROM
  • remove both SIM card and memory card

In the steps below, I will show the flashing of custom/cooked ROM to the HTC Touch HD aka Blackstone.
  1. Firstly, you will need to grab the cooked ROM from the xda-forum. There are plenty of ROMs to choose from. The best I've known is Dutty, Miri, Energy and Topix. The filesize are usually around 150MB and it's usually zipped.
  2. This is the most important part in order to be possible for installation of cooked ROM. You will need Blackstone USPL V2.5 bootloader. You can get it here in the 2nd post of xda-forum. Please read through the 1st post to understand further what you should be aware of.
  3. Now, the preparations are all done. Make sure you had backed up all your important information from the phone as flashing the ROM will be equivalent to hard reset All information formerly on the phone will be totally wiped out.
  4. To begin, switch Off your phone.
  5. Once the phone is off, press and hold Volume Down rocker (left side of the phone) and On button (top of the phone) simultaneously.
  6. You will next see a SPL screen which consists of Red, Green, Blue and White. Notice that there is SPL-1.14.0000 (or in some cases SPL-1.54) on the red tab. This is called the SPL bootloader screen.
  7. Now, connect your USB cable from the pc to your Blackstone. You will notice "USB" on the white tab at the bottom. Make sure that the "USB" is written on the white tab as this is crucial for the next step.
  8. Next, execute the USPL 2.5 (blac_uspl.exe) which you had downloaded earlier. It is an execute file from windows. Once the execution is completed, y0u will see the word USPL at the back of the SPL-1.54 which you saw earlier in the red tab. It should look something like this now:
  9. Note: This image is taken from XDA-forum.
  10. Now, the most important part, flashing! Execute the cooked ROM file which you had downloaded earlier from either Dutty, Miri or others. This is the ROM installation file.
  11. Follow the on-screen instruction and you will then see the installation progressing bar on both your phone and also the pc. It will take approx. 10mins to complete the entire installation. Once done, your phone will restart and you can unplug the USB cable from your phone while it's restarting.
  12. It is recommended that you hard reset your device once before actually using it. To do this, press and hold Volume Up and Volume Down rocker while briefly press the On button. Hold Volume Up and Down until an instruction screen appear. Follow the on-screen instruction and you are done!
  13. Congrats on your first attempt to have a cooked ROM on your Blackstone!


*Disclaimer: This customization of ROMs are all made possible thanks to the guys from XDA-forum.
Posted by at 1:05 PM

11 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 11, 2010 at 6:57 PM

    When I plug in the phone it does not change the white Bootloader-screen to USB - do you know how to fix this?

    ReplyDelete
  2. ezpertMarch 10, 2010 at 12:09 AM

    Try changing to another USB cable. There was previous report that changing the cable would fix the problem.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousAugust 3, 2010 at 9:15 AM

    what i hv downloaded is a .7z file.. how do i do this? and instead of seeing USB in the white tab, it shows SERIAL.. help!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. ezpertAugust 11, 2010 at 11:54 PM

    .7z is a type of zip file. Go to this link and download the extractor: http://www.7-zip.org/

    As for the SERIAL shown instead of USB, please make sure that the USB cable is working fine. Try changing to another USB cable and re-try the process.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousNovember 25, 2010 at 3:47 PM

    what do you mean by "execute the USPL 2.5 (blac_uspl.exe)" can you explain to me oh how to execute the USPL and the cooked rom? i already connect to USB cable and i found the USB in the lower part then i dont know the next step... can you help me

    Thank you

    ReplyDelete
  6. ezpertDecember 20, 2010 at 9:09 PM

    Execute USPL2.5 means double-click on the blac_uspl.exe file.
    Once this is done, you should see the colourful screen (as the one in the pic). It will not be exactly the same, but similar. Once the blac_uspl program is done, you should see "USPL" in the colourful screen. After this you are ready to execute the cooked ROM which you have earlier downloaded.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousJanuary 20, 2011 at 10:40 PM

    thanksss

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousAugust 1, 2011 at 2:03 AM

    blac_uspl just starts and crashes quicly it's not ofen for a second i just see the comannd prompt and it closes after 0.5 sec!!
    help!! thanks

    ReplyDelete
  9. ezpertAugust 1, 2011 at 8:31 PM

    Are you using Win XP or others?

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousOctober 19, 2011 at 9:55 PM

    Hi ezpert,

    I am using windows 7, my blackstone keeps freezing at 0%.
    I use a standart USB-cable wich I always use with the blackstone

    ReplyDelete
  11. ezpertOctober 26, 2011 at 11:20 PM

    Try running on compatible mode.
    Another option would be to try Windows 7's XP mode.

    ReplyDelete

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