I’ve decided to hard reset my HTC Desire tonight in hope of clearing up a few niggling bugs.
Namely: The news feed widget not updating itself automatically.
I know it’s quite a drastic thing to do just to try and fix something like this but it’s also nice to have a “clean” phone without things loading up and running in the background from the various apps I had installed.
I’m also going to take the leap and try to switch from Yahoo to Gmail so I can use the built-in GMail app. This’ll allow me to utilise the GMail app’s HTML support which although people seem to hate, I quite like. Previously I was using the excellent K-9 Mail app which has full HTML support.
Will the bugs “fix themselves” or will I be spending a long time setting my phone up again for no particular game. Only time will tell but I am giving myself to the world of Google now.
This is how I hard/factory reset my HTC Desire:
- Turn off the phone
- Hold the Volume Down button
- Press and release the Power button
- You are now presented with a menu that allows for Fastbook, Recovery, Clear Storage, and Simlock
- Select Clear Storage by pressing the Volume Down button
- Press and release the Power button
- Now simply confirm your decision: Volume Up for YES and Volume Downfor NO
Tags: Desire, factory, firmware, gmail, google, hard, HTC, reset
HTC Desire Fanatics 
May 16, 2010 at 8:01 am |
Don’t mind me waiting for your results. How about all the (paid) apps? They’re deleted I suppose… Curious wheter or not this hard reset has solved your problems. Let us know, please.
May 16, 2010 at 5:39 pm |
Hmm sadly the reset didn’t solve my problems but I have noticed the phone responding a lot quicker than it was previously – likely because I haven’t installed half the crap I had on before.
Paid apps are fine. Signing back into the Market brings back all my recent downloads (inc paid apps) in the “Downloads” section so got them re-installed without a problem.
May 16, 2010 at 11:00 am |
Interested by your switch to GMail Jon. I’m on Yahoo and would like to keep it, but can’t set it up via IMAP on the Desire (something I could do on Windows Mobile!). Did you succeed doing this at any point?
Closest I’ve come to is MailDroid, but currently that doesn’t allow offline access to emails.
May 16, 2010 at 5:40 pm |
I don’t have IMAP access to Yahoo sadly – that’s a paid option isn’t it?
The best e-mail client I found was K-9 Mail. It supports IMAP very well (my work account uses IMAP) but not 100% sure whether it allowed for offline browsing although I’m 70% sure it did…
May 19, 2010 at 8:43 am
Interesting – I tried K-9 and still couldn’t get Yahoo to work on IMAP there. Currently using POP using default client which is fine, but eagerly looking out for anything new. An official app from Yahoo would be good – perplexed why they haven’t made one (or is google blocking it?)
January 29, 2011 at 11:03 am |
How about the updates? I want to reset my phone also because of the latest update to android (update 2.29.405.5) which brought more bugs then the original android 2.1 had.
So my plan would be to reset and apply only the updates that worked.
So I am curious if the reset takes my phone back to android 2.1 or it will keep all the updates ?
January 31, 2011 at 7:45 pm |
Hi, I’m afraid when you update the firmware, resetting your phone to defaults won’t help as the new firmware is stored permanently. It might be possible to downgrade somehow but I don’t know how. Check out the XDA Developers forum for help!
November 28, 2011 at 9:23 am |
Thanks for this Jon. I have been locked out of my phone for 3 days & my phone company was unable to help me. I now have my phone back 🙂 Much appreciated 🙂
July 15, 2012 at 9:28 am |
My power button has been push in permanently. I have been getting into te phone previously by using an app that requires hand movement across the screen to unlock it.
When I get the screen up with :
FASTBOOT
RECOVERY
FACTORY RESET
SIMLOCK
IMAGE CRC
I press the volume down button to select factory reset, but it automatically selects recovery.
Is there anyway to overcome this??
July 18, 2012 at 8:42 pm |
hI I JUST TRIED THIS BUT DIDNT WORK MY ISSUE ISNT REST REALLY MY LETTERS S AND W NOT WORKING IN TEXT OR FACEBOOK AND WAS ADVISE TO RESET HAVE ANYONE COME ACROSS THIS BEFORE WHAT CAN I DO TO GET THEM WORKING THANKS!
September 2, 2012 at 7:26 am |
but i cant format my htc desire hd using phone buttons or this above trick what should i do now is their any alternative option to hard reset HTC
August 23, 2014 at 9:40 am |
Eun Song
HTC Desire hard/factory reset | HTC Desire Fanatics
July 11, 2015 at 12:01 pm |
hey guys need help my htc bravo got stuck on the starting logo after I hard reseted it please any one need some urgent help