My HTC Desire S suffered minor water ingress yesterday.

I immediately took out the battery, dried it off & left it to dry out somewhere warm.

When I later powered it on, it started up in Safe Mode.

So there’s obviously some damage done (?).

I took the battery out again and left the phone on a radiator overnight.

This morning it powered on in Safe Mode again.

Then when I turned it off then on again, it now goes direct to the HBOOT menu.

I can use the volume button to select boot menu options, but the power button isn’t actioning my choice.

So, I’m currently with a phone that’s stuck in HBOOT.

Is my phone actually dead?
Or is there a way around/through this problem?

I used a boot cd (you burn it on your pc and boot off it) to root and turn security off on my desire. I’m not sure but I think it did everything from the pc, I don’t remember having to use those fiddly menus at all. I ¨hink I reflashed my rom at the same time.

I can’t quite remember the name of the cd, but it has a picture of the joker from batman on it – maybe unrevoked or revolution or revolutionary.

other thing to try is have you got adb, and do you know how to use it – i’d try adb reboot, or adb reboot recovery and see what happened.

Check the volume down button isn’t stuck. Mine used to boot into that screen all the time and it was caused by a button problem.

Edit: sorry, I missed the fact you can move around the menu.

Update!

bawbag – you may be on to something.

If I power on whilst holding down the ‘volume up’ button the phone starts in safe mode.

I can’t then turn down the volume using the ‘volume down’ button, therefore it looks like a problem with the button.

The phone insists on running in safe mode though … this is either due to it thinking the button’s ‘stuck’ down, or some other damage caused by the original water ingress …

Menu button stuck on, or trackball?

it’s a Desire S, so no trackball … just a button on the side for volume up/down, with which the holding ‘down’ when pressing power on defaults to the HBOOT menu

it’s since powered up NOT in safe mode … I’ve no idea what’s going on now 😕

fingers crossed it’s ok

Yep, mine was a Desire S as well. Vodafone had to replace it in the end but the new one works fine.

Realistically you need to give it three or four days to dry out in a bag of rice or silica gel somewhere warm, then report back.