DON’T DO THIS: I am currently locked out of my phone waiting for tech support at Orange to call. Will Update once I get more information.
Update: Seems the problem is the SIM, if I take the SIM out the phone works 100% bar the network bits.
Update: As I really need the phone later I have flashed back to the Orange ROM. There was no issues doing this, so guess you can try the below an know you have an escape road if needed. Would assume back to the generic would work also but not tested. Will have a play once I can get an unlocked SIM/unlock code from Orange.
Final Update: Orange say this will be fixed by an unlock code, that they want £20 for 
. Going to just wait for the Orange update, and work out how I can find £500 for an iPhone 4 (or 5 by the time I save up!)
While browsing the HTC Hero Blog I saw a comment by elmoono saying it’s quite simple to debrand the Hero back to the generic ROM. Having done this on my Nokia N72 to get a fix Orange (again) hadn’t rolled out I was very confident doing this to my Hero.
First things first however, I ran a complete backup using Mybackup Pro. There is a free version good for 30 days if you haven’t used this before. This saves off all my settings, call logs SMS etc and means I can get close to an unaffected phone post reflash.
Next I followed the steps here: http://bit.ly/bdDOlM. This was a very simple process and took me about 20 minutes once I had found a XP machine to do the ROM reflash on, the Goldcard bit was fine on Windows 7.
Once the reflash was complete I hadn’t even logged on to the wireless and the update was already prompting me for a download!
Updated generic 1.5 ROM on Orange branded hardware
I am now up and running on a generic HTC ROM, free from the clutches of Orange and it’s update lag!
Now all I need to do is reinstall my apps and restore my settings/SMS etc using MyBackup Pro.
Update: Had a small issue where I couldn’t edit my calendar items from my phone, suspect it was down to permissions as I used this as a chance to do the googlemail -> gmail migration. This was fixed by backing up the calendar, deleting it and restoring it, all done from the web front end. If you need more information leave a comment.
This is brilliant, thank you for this – I am considering giving this a try so I can get Eclair ASAP!
What exactly do Orange branded ROMs have different? Can you still get apps like MY Orange and Orange Wednesdays? I figured you might have to have an Orange ROM to be able to find these in the Market.
Thanks
There’s not that much I can see in honesty. The splash logo on start up and that’s about it. You can still get Your Orange and Orange Wednesdays from the market.
This works until i try to install the generic ruu where it says please use the correct rom update utility..
What do i do?
Sounds like the Gold Card didn’t work. I’d try that bit again.