Related
Hi,
this seems to be the right place for the question, but I'm sure the answer will be applicable to other phone. Assuming there is going to be an answer
Stupidly, yours truly downloaded and installed hotfix from here http://www.htc.com/www/supportdownloadlist.aspx?p_id=140&act=sd&cat=all in the hopes of improving audio quality. Well, this apparently was not meant for CDMA (or US phones). After installing the phone rebooted and got stuck at the Touch Pro screen where it lists FW/SW versions in red towards the bottom. The phone can not get past that point no matter what I do (reset, battery remove/replace) or how long I wait (overnight). Sprint 'suggested' hard reset (thank you very much) and HTC said they have no fix for that either. Well, if you have not guessed it already, I have not backed up the data on that phone. Ever.
Not smart
The phone was running stock SF/FW before. I have not had time to mess with it.
US$64K question is: Could I retrieve the phone book? Any other data that was not on SD card (that one is safe)? Is there a chance to recover data AFTER hard reset? Anything else the smart folk out there can recommend?
Thanks a lot in advance.
try flashing via SD card
If its stuck at the bootloader mode (the tri color screen) i thing its possible to flash it via SD card.
there is plenty of info around or check out the Raphael wiki.
There is a chance it is not bricked.
(i seriouslly doubt is it because the HTC hotfix cannot do that)
Let me know if you need any more help my email me at hotmail
best regards.... Erik
The screen looks like this: http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h15/cadillacjew/TP-1.jpg
with some test indicating SW/ROM etc versions in RED at the bottom. If it is important I can upload the picture of it.
Also may take you up on your offer. Need those contacts, otherwise I'm so screwed
I dunno, it sounds like you're going to need a hard reset. That will fix the problem, I'm sure. Have you tried connecting by active sync? I'm 99.999% positive it won't work, but it wouldn't hurt to at least try and see if you can pull pim.vol off of it. Also, you might download ceregeditor (just google it) and install it on your pc, and see if you can dump the registry from the phone. But I have a bad feeling you're screwed.
Is this really the end of the road?
Yes, I (and Sprint store that I went to) tried connecting the phone via usb and it was not even recognized as a device. Hard reset sounds goo, but it will erase the data. Before I take that drastic measure I'd like to make sure there is nothing else I could do.
I'm willing to pay some money to a forensics company to extract the data, but can not find one that looks trustworthy and experienced when it comes to Win mobile phones. Any recommendations, btw?
I have no clue; you might try one of the rom dumping procedures. I think that some may dump the rom and all the info on the phone; I've never done it myself (well, I've played with grab_it on another device, with little success). I believe that some will dump all the info on the phone (rom + stuff in main memory). But I can't tell you how to do it, I'm afraid, and I have no clue if it will work on your phone.
You can check these tools-maybe there's something there.
Most likely everything is gone.
I have to sadly agree. This sounds like something only a hard reset would fix.
Any possibility of data recovery after hard reset? Anybody knows of a way to that? Of course this is wishful thinking on my part, but I'm pretty desperate now.
fatherof2 said:
Any possibility of data recovery after hard reset? Anybody knows of a way to that? Of course this is wishful thinking on my part, but I'm pretty desperate now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately, it seems that you are stuck. I do not know of any way to recover your data if the device is stuck on bootloader since, as you pointed out, the device does not get recognized by the computer.
Anything that you do at this point might end up making things worse if you are not careful. Just cut your losses and hard reset the device.
its not in booloader mode, dumping the ROM sounds like a good and only way to go, try it, it wont hurt you, if that dont work i'd say its pretty much dead with no way to recover it, unless the info is unrecoverable (spell?) hard reset it.....
best regards. Erik
The only issue with your suggestion is that I'm no longer in possession of the phone. I had to leave it in the Sprint store in order to walk out with working phone. I can go back to the store and try to get the data off of my old phone. They are holding it for me.
However, I need to know what to do exactly and be able to do it quickly. So if there are easy to follow instructions that you can point me to, please do so.
Also after dumping ROM what data will I have?
TIA for all your help.
your data will be gone but try putting a raphimg.nbh file on the memory card then holding power and volume down while hitting the reset button, that will flash you off the mem card. good luck. Ive had to do this several times due to bad flashes and vista issues. Oh and as an added thought start using microsoft myphone to back up your data in the future.
Thanks for your suggestion. I will try this in a week or so when I'm back in town.
Also myphone is something that should work. I actually did not know about it until this past Monday. I have not looked at any MS-based backup solutions because I'm not using their software, if I can avoid it. So while I have a Windows PC I do not have Outlook installed and thus have never given my phone a chance to sync up. Kind of silly, I know.
I had bitpm installed on another system that went bad. I've replaced it with a new one, retrieved other files and data, but forgot about Bitpm folder
So few lessons learned ...
Thanks again to all who provided feedback.
It sucks if you lost everything, but you should be able to put your phone in bootloader and connect it to your pc through usb. The only question is if you can dump the rom that way and if you can dump all the files on it with the rom. The only problem is that some of the rom dumping methods (like with pdocread, I think) require you to transfer a file to your \windows directory, which you're not going to be able to do. It's a long shot at best.
I back up my pim stuff 3 different ways-I think you want to do it in multiple ways just to be safe. My main method is using sk tools and its backup tool. You can separately back up the pim database and the messaging databases (not as important to me). You can also back up email accounts with sk tools (using the pim information tool). These are my main backups, and I keep them on my sd card, and occasionally transfer them to a hard drive (it's not that big of a deal if the hard drive backup is a month out of date to me). I also use Pimbackup 2.8, and store that on my sd card (and hard drive). I don't use it for restoring anymore, because it's pretty slow with 6.5 roms in my experience. Finally, I have a file backup mortscript that I use that backs up user data for various apps; I use it to restore the data after flashes. Anyway, included in the script is a command to copy pim.vol to my sd card. I never restore my pim files by copying pim.vol back to main memory, but I like having it saved just in case, and it doesn't take any time to run the script (FYI-all your contacts, tasks and calendar stuff is stored in pim.vol, which is on the root of your device). Anyway, I feel like my pim databases are pretty safe-it would take an awful lot of bad things to happen for them to be lost, and I'd probably be dead in half of those scenarios, lol.
You're going to lose everything. The phone will not boot and as a result, all your data is unrecoverable. Next time, use a back up solution like Google Sync.
Do a hard-reset on it and you should be good to go. Turn the phone off, hold the volume down key, the center dpad key, and then hold the power button. It'll come up to a screen with hard reset instructions. Push the volume up key here. It'll be ready to go like it's brand new out of the box.
Lost everything, but .... happy
Hi,
thanks to everyone who replied. Just wanted to post and update so we can close this thread.
As I indicated before, Sprint has replaced my phone with Touch Pro 2 when I came to them with this problem. They did it beacuse they no longer have loaner phones and because I was about to go on 10 day business trip.
After using the new phone for 2 weeks, I got to tell you that this one is a leap forward compare to the the old. So I'm happy with new device, installing software and trying to recreate my Address Book by dumping my friends and family's data via Bluetooth. Backing up using MyPhone and about to install Outlook (not going to use it for anything else but the backup)
Also, I finally went to Sprint store and asked them one more time if they can think of any other way to recover the data. I even mentioned bootloader. They did not know/could not do it. I asked them to hard reset and after few tries the phone was restored to it's original state. Not a trace of my data .
Would be nice if in the future I could save contacts (and other data) directly to SD card. IMO it will give better chance of recovery, but I'm not sure it is possible.
Again thanks to all who tried to help. Much appreciated.
Same problem sort of
I tried to load Energy Rom 28005 and now can't get pro to do any thing but restart every 15 seconds or so. any ideas on what can be done? tia.
All,
Hey there. Quick question to those more experienced than me...when doing a nandroid backup what do you select to backup? I know the obvious default plus Wimax keys but what about the other options? My current BU is everything but SD. Think that has too much crap (dalvik and all) with it? Also, what sizes of backups are you guys seeing for things? Off hand I want to say my system was 640 and Wimax was 12 (MB). I know some will vary but others should be fairly constant. I did a search but didn't see a ton of good answers on this so I figured I'd start a thread.
Input?
Other related input for TWRP questions?
Thanks
Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk
I backup system, data, boot, wimax.
Nandroids are usually almost 1 gig, so I stick with a couple backups, then I transfer them over to my PC. That way I have more room on the SDcard.
AOSP roms will be way less than a gig since Sense is taken out. That might sit around 200mb per backup.
Dave2582 said:
I backup system, data, boot, wimax.
Nandroids are usually almost 1 gig, so I stick with a couple backups, then I transfer them over to my PC. That way I have more room on the SDcard.
AOSP roms will be way less than a gig since Sense is taken out. That might sit around 200mb per backup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 backup of system, data, and boot are a must, everything else is optional. I make one backup of wimax and store in on my pc.
Thanks. I figured system data boot and Wimax were the mandatory ones. My thought process for initially including the others was for a most accurate "snapshot" of the current state in the event if a bad flash. I used CWM on all previous roots and I don't recall it being as granular. The option to be specific is nice though. I just wanted to make sure my understanding of each was right. I seem to be grasping well. I'm a firm believer that if you hose something up you didn't do your HW right. The knowledge is always there if you read, and ask when applicable.
Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk
Also...props for mentioning the explicit Wimax backup. I'm going to do that now. That seems to be the most forgotten thing with TWRP since is not selected by default for some reason.
The Wimax RSA keys are specific to each Wimax mac are they not? Just a guess but I wanted to clarify. If they aren't an explicit backup may help someone who may have forgotten them. Even still I'm sure a Dev may be able to mod one up to be used as a recovery. My coding knowledge is limited but i know my way around I.T. in general very well.
Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk
Dave2582 said:
I backup system, data, boot, wimax.
Nandroids are usually almost 1 gig, so I stick with a couple backups, then I transfer them over to my PC. That way I have more room on the SDcard.
AOSP roms will be way less than a gig since Sense is taken out. That might sit around 200mb per backup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm still a noob- why do you do a couple nandroids? If you have 2 or more on the SD how can you differentiate them? Would you know just by the date modification?
thanks
Skyphos said:
Also...props for mentioning the explicit Wimax backup. I'm going to do that now. That seems to be the most forgotten thing with TWRP since is not selected by default for some reason.
The Wimax RSA keys are specific to each Wimax mac are they not? Just a guess but I wanted to clarify. If they aren't an explicit backup may help someone who may have forgotten them. Even still I'm sure a Dev may be able to mod one up to be used as a recovery. My coding knowledge is limited but i know my way around I.T. in general very well.
Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wimax keys are different on each phone, a friend of mine hosed his evo 4g that way..he restored the backup from his first evo to another evo..and it was poof...gone. Wimax keys are special for the towers..
btkgator said:
I'm still a noob- why do you do a couple nandroids? If you have 2 or more on the SD how can you differentiate them? Would you know just by the date modification?
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do it when sober...or else you will forget what date stamp was for what backup...
As far as I know...it is only by dates they are stored.hmmm makes me want to write a trwp utility that will read the time timestamp of the backup and you can enter notes in it. Kinda like a trwp backup note taker...put on to do list...
life64x said:
Do it when sober...or else you will forget what date stamp was for what backup...
As far as I know...it is only by dates they are stored.hmmm makes me want to write a trwp utility that will read the time timestamp of the backup and you can enter notes in it. Kinda like a trwp backup note taker...put on to do list...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see- I clearly did not open of this file to see the date stamps- HT168HX01594. But to my surprise when I opened it up- 082820111824. Now I just need to figure out how to read that.
I just use Astros and rename it to what it is a backup of and the date.
Shot by my Alter_EvO!......... BANG!
TWRP does a good job at labeling it under your device name (dev name/date+time/data.) but i did notice TWRP's clock sometimes gets a lil off. I set it to my GMT offset once and a week or so later i did a backup and i was upward 2 hours off. Not a big deal but thought it may be worth mentioning. Also, their battery% is off a little. Again, none of this really matters but just an observation.
And I keep several NAND's because its easy as pie to reload those and never miss a beat. Once i get a rom the way I want it I make a NAND and file it. I try to do that ever now and again so i have a recent update. Whats it hurt? You can always have a NAND of your favorite rom so you can switch pretty seamlessly...and you always keep an updated backup.
Space isnt hard to come by either...several 1GB files on a PC is nothing and even 2GB on a phones SD card isnt much to ask for given the peace of mind it offers you.
Curious for those of us without the proper tools or the know how to do this properly. This works for the Note but can also work for any other device.
Just study up. Read the instructions. Visit the general section and read. Flashing is easy. Best to just learn. Watch some YouTube videos. Be careful. Have fun.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
NightHawkUndead said:
Just study up. Read the instructions. Visit the general section and read. Flashing is easy.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You missed the part in the OP about not having the proper tools. No amount of reading or studying or preparing can help when the tool is made for Windows and you're running a Mac (or no computer at all).
OP -- I'm sure there's plenty of people on here who do (or would help you with) flashing ROMs but a lot of that is going to depend on where you live. Best bet: Craigslist and see if you can find someone in the Cell Phones section who does that. Denver (yes... where I am) has a ton of shops that will flash custom ROMs for you - but of course they want you to pay for the privilege.
However - I would really recommend finding someone local and trustworthy. Don't EVER send someone your device, because let's be honest - you'll most likely never see it again unless you're sending it to a real business.
bmstrong said:
Curious for those of us without the proper tools or the know how to do this properly. This works for the Note but can also work for any other device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First....start off at YouTube, and watch people root the Nexus One over ADB. You'll learn a few tricks...but most importantly, you'll learn your way around the device manager and the command prompt in windows. While it may seem daunting at first...there are only a few commands you'll need to learn.
That solves the problem you'd have with rooting and installing Clockwork Mod (the basis for flashing any new ROMs.
Lastly...if you can find a valid windows installation (or you can even use a 90 day trial version of windows 7 enterprise) you'll want to install boot camp on your Mac...which allows you to run windows on your Mac. Easily.
By no means am I an android powerhouse, but I do work in IT and am handy with a device manager, various hosts, and windows and Mac.
The next best option would be to offer someone here 10-20 bucks to show you over Skype, or do it for you using go to meeting.
Remember 1 thing. Its actually hard to brick a device if you do a few things.
Only flash RC or final versions of ROMs. In general. These have been THOUROUGHLY tested. The more feedback for a ROM the better. Learn to search threads here frequently.
Don't go about customizing the software by flashing mods (until your more comfortable). Android provides a perfect host system for providing customization via the Play store. Widgets...toggles...backgrounds. Notification tweaks, and almost everything else you'll need can be found on the play store and easily uninstalled.
Lastly...always keep a backup of you're system
via Nandroid, and keep a backup of your apps with Titanium backup.
If you have any more questions....feel free to ask them here or PM me.
You can start by researching "how to do a Nandroid" and "what is clockwork recovery mod" in your favorite search engine.
If you think you can follow the simple steps of performing a Nandroid and you can find your way around Clockwork Recovery Mod....there really isn't much to worry about.
Bricking your device can usually be fixed in the case of a soft brick or boot loop. The real bricking usually happens when you flash software meant for another device, or don't follow instructions.
Once you've flashed your first ROM...you'll find that the process is remarkably similar for all mods ROMs and other packages.
Appreciate the replies. The largest problem I have is the computer itself. I have whole rooms of computers sitting across the street at KSU. Not a problem to use and my pick of OS. The problem lies in they are public and get wiped on shutdown. So no backup. Thoughts?
I've done updates across various Mobiles for years like that.
bmstrong said:
Appreciate the replies. The largest problem I have is the computer itself. I have whole rooms of computers sitting across the street at KSU. Not a problem to use and my pick of OS. The problem lies in they are public and get wiped on shutdown. So no backup. Thoughts?
I've done updates across various Mobiles for years like that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Honestly - Once you get CWM setup on the phone there's very little if any need for a computer. I'm not sure what you mean by "backup" but since you're talking about public computers - let's just run through this scenario:
Go across the street and install CWM. Now, let's say a few days later a new ROM comes out. Woohoo! Assuming you've already flashed CWM, all you need to do is shutdown your phone, backup it up in recovery. This saves to your external SD. Reboot. Download new ROM save to internal SD. Shutdown, pull external SD, boot to recovery, flash away.
If you're worried about it - buy a USB external drive and use the university computer to copy the contents of your external SD across to the hard drive every one in a while.
netsyd said:
Honestly - Once you get CWM setup on the phone there's very little if any need for a computer. I'm not sure what you mean by "backup" but since you're talking about public computers - let's just run through this scenario:
Go across the street and install CWM. Now, let's say a few days later a new ROM comes out. Woohoo! Assuming you've already flashed CWM, all you need to do is shutdown your phone, backup it up in recovery. This saves to your external SD. Reboot. Download new ROM save to internal SD. Shutdown, pull external SD, boot to recovery, flash away.
If you're worried about it - buy a USB external drive and use the university computer to copy the contents of your external SD across to the hard drive every one in a while.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now that sounds like a plan. Hmmm. Maybe I can do this myself. Now I need to find a stock stable ICS with NFC enabled. Even better would be one to take advantage of the radio hidden by AT&T. It would be nice to have the option to pop and flop.
Exactly. Once the initial root and new recovery menu is done then you are set. Between a CWM nandroid, Titanium Backup, MybackupPro, and even Appsaver your only real limitation is set by how large your external sdcard is.
You can even use online storage sites like Minus, Google Drive, Drop Box etc to host all of the files so that you can access them anywhere.
Hmmm. What's the closest stock ICS out there right now, if I may?
I am running Flapjaxx Unofficial ICS and it is super smooth. I plan on switching to his latest though once it is finished downloading.
netsyd said:
Honestly - Once you get CWM setup on the phone there's very little if any need for a computer. I'm not sure what you mean by "backup" but since you're talking about public computers - let's just run through this scenario:
Go across the street and install CWM. Now, let's say a few days later a new ROM comes out. Woohoo! Assuming you've already flashed CWM, all you need to do is shutdown your phone, backup it up in recovery. This saves to your external SD. Reboot. Download new ROM save to internal SD. Shutdown, pull external SD, boot to recovery, flash away.
If you're worried about it - buy a USB external drive and use the university computer to copy the contents of your external SD across to the hard drive every one in a while.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 on any Flappjaxxx ROM btw. So you pull your external sd? Have you ever had an issue or is it just a precaution?
Sent from Galaxy Note
bmstrong said:
Appreciate the replies. The largest problem I have is the computer itself. I have whole rooms of computers sitting across the street at KSU. Not a problem to use and my pick of OS. The problem lies in they are public and get wiped on shutdown. So no backup. Thoughts?
I've done updates across various Mobiles for years like that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wonder if it would help you to back up on google drive? Ive never tried it or anything but it could possibly give you some cloud space. Maybe a good option?
Yayodroid said:
I wonder if it would help you to back up on google drive? Ive never tried it or anything but it could possibly give you some cloud space. Maybe a good option?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah. I use both Drive and Dropbox, so no worries. The larger question I have is why do I need to back some of this stuff up? I've never been a big application guy. This Note has 4? Maybe 5 apps on it, aside from the stock Google services. SMS/MMS get deleted instantly or saved into the Cloud. And email moved with my Gmail account and that gets barfed back into each Mobile I use very easily.
Titanium backup seems like a pain in the ass. All I'm after is a clean stock ICS build, a way to shut off the hard keys and replace them with soft buttons, and that MHL works. Turning this Note into a portable LTE MHL Chromebox with a fantastic screen. The option to flop and plop would be nice...
you dont have to back up, but personally i would like to have my own personal backup of stock. of course there are stock odins around here. but in your situation it might be more handy on the cloud to access anytime. you might want to use the back up to flash back to for when they release ics over the air.
Service makes some sense
If you've read many of the questions that some poeple ask on these forums, it really makes me think that certain people really shouldn't be trying some of these things themselves. Most of us have no problem reading and understanding rudimentary steps to get us going, but some people come in with little to no foundation in these matters; what we're saying really is Greek to them. I feel bad, but for these people, I encourage them to seek out someone that knows, at least on a basic level, what they are doing.
I've written looooong, detailed tutorials for people and I'm glad to do it. But sometimes even after that, I get the feeling that these people will still end up messing their phones up. I've been proven right on at least two occasion and I can't help but feel bad... So maybe a pool of people in each area capable and willing to do these kinds of things might make sense. Haven't thought through how that would work, but maybe. Hmmm...
bmstrong said:
Hmmm. What's the closest stock ICS out there right now, if I may?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im using team perfections ics ucle2 objection with rc1 its great as well as fj's
sent from team perfections ics rom
Extremely interesting process and results. I still have a host of questions, why certain things are done in a certain order, what exactly some of the things do that I did, and why when I did not make a back up of anything, it said specifically that it failed, some of my apps and vids are still here in the new FJ ROM. Just a fasincinating first time experience from someone who has always used stock Nexi. The ROM isn't really my taste, I hate Apex and there is bloat apps in it. But!
I feel like the old Quantum Leap show...
You can debloat with tibu. Also, you can use any launcher you want.
Sent from Galaxy Note
Hi there folks,
I'm having a bit of a problem with my Vibrant phone. Or, rather, I've always had this problem with this phone:
There is an extreme lag to the interface, sometimes with it barely responding at all for 10 or so seconds.
This problem was present even on the stock ROM/kernel/image , straight from Samsung/T-Mobile, enough so that I've also tried CM9 and CM10 ROMS.
This lag seems to be present in almost every system of the phone, to a varying degree; for example, when I pretty the button to turn the screen on, it'll take 1-2 seconds for the LCD to turn on (OLED?), but the the backlight will remain off for another 1-3 seconds. And when I open the Call Logs screen, it takes 10-20 seconds for all the phone numbers to be converted into names from the Contacts list. There's plenty more instance where the UI and UX are really seriously affected by the lag, but those are two examples that jump out.
Since I don't know anyone else with this phone, I don't have a point of comparison, I might get some YouTube video of some of these latencies to try and better demonstrate what I'm describing here.
Seeing as this has happened with two very different ROMS and configurations loaded onto the phone, I'm not worried that I may have gotten a bum piece of hardware. Is there any sort of truly objective test that can be done? Something to verify the flash mem access speed, or verify that there are no faults in the RAM, or any such things?
Has anyone else experience this kind of a response from the UI? Is this just a fundamental limit of what this phone can do?
sorry to here that but when you got the phone is when you should have made the call back.... but in question have you ever used odin to go back to true stock firmware to see if maybe its a software issue and not the hardware of the phone try using this guide http://team-passion.com/index.php/wiki/general/15-how-to-use-odin-for-vibrant or search around for odin tutorials that you should try back and make sure you back up everything before you do anything save all your stuff to your PC if possible numbers everything back it up using titanium backup or Rom toolbox both work pretty good make a nandroid back up and save that to computer as well then start the trial and error process hope you can resolve this need help feel free to PM me good luck
krazierokz said:
sorry to here that but when you got the phone is when you should have made the call back.... but in question have you ever used odin to go back to true stock firmware to see if maybe its a software issue and not the hardware of the phone try using this guide http://team-passion.com/index.php/wiki/general/15-how-to-use-odin-for-vibrant or search around for odin tutorials that you should try back and make sure you back up everything before you do anything save all your stuff to your PC if possible numbers everything back it up using titanium backup or Rom toolbox both work pretty good make a nandroid back up and save that to computer as well then start the trial and error process hope you can resolve this need help feel free to PM me good luck
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thats what i would do, wipe it clean. take backup of everything you have first and clean out the whole friggin phone. odin to a stock rom and go from there without installing anything yet. i always odin to lidroid because it comes rooted already. good luck
How to make a true system image?
Thanks for the input guys; it makes sense that perhaps I should do a true, true nuclear solution reformat, reconstruction, etc.
Is there a way to make a true "image" of the phone as it is now? It's not really clear what Titanium Backup is doing, so I'm curious if there is a way to make a full-on 16GB (or more) duplicate of the phone's entire flash memory, so I could switch back to it, if needed? Something akin to doing a 'dd if=/dev/sda of=backup.dat' in linux.
So my wife broke her phone. (A car ran over it) .
As you can imagine the phone is pretty messed up. Originaly the phone still worked(for a few weeks) and then she bought a new phone and left that one.
Now a few weeks later i try to turn it on to take the pictures off and it boots into the bootloader and thats where i am in need of your help. If there a way for me to get the pictures off of this phone?
Photos shows you have an M7, and this forum section is specific to the M8. While the devices have some similarities, its always best to get help in your specific device forum, in case of any M7 specific naunces, pitfalls, etc.
What I can say, in general:
1) Try booting into recovery, and see if it will mount the internal storage if you connect to a computer. I know custom recovery (TWRP) will let you do this, but I don't know if stock recovery (since it looks like the phone is stock and never modded) has this ability or not (I'm thinking probably not, but hey its worth a try). It might be a long shot, but if you can mount memory, you should be able to simply browse to the folder where the pics are saved, and just copy and paste them to your computer.
2) These devices have a good amount of cloud backup apps built-in (Google Photos, Dropbox, HTC Backup). Depending on whether your wife opened any of them, and agreed to backup the pics, they may already be on the cloud, and can be easily accessed by logging into the specific service's website on a computer. Again, might be a longshot, but one can always hope; and it doesn't hurt to check.
3) Short of the above, if the phone won't boot into OS, you may be somewhat stuck. If the phone can't bootup into OS, and won't mount recovery otherwise, the only options I can think of to get OS or custom recovery on the phone, involves unlocking the bootloader; which will wipe the storage and defeat the whole purpose.
I know hindsight is always 20/20. But I've lost count how many times I've told folks on here and other smartphone forums: If the data is important to you, than back it up. With so many options to do so (backup to computer, cloud, removable SD) there is really no good reason not to. As already mentioned, in particular the cloud backup solutions take very little interaction, and fully automated once you've accepted the option to use them to backup the pics.
I know you've mentioned its your wife's phone. But regardless of whether its her device or yours or whatever; the previous paragraph applies to everyone with a smartphone. At least moving forward, you and your wife should start backing up your personal data (if you haven't already). Waiting for a disaster is not really the best time to started considering backup methods; but late is better than never.
Rant over. Good luck recovering the pics, in any case!