Install Windows Phone 7

by ANDREI & FLORIN 19-JAN-2013

After months of intensive development, DFT (Dark Forces Team) has finally managed porting Windows Phone 7 to HTC HD2 and have released the ROM for you to install on your HD2. This ROM is a remarkable breakthrough for the HD2 and has most of the WP7 features working! If you want to dump Windows Mobile 6.5 in favor of Microsoft’s latest mobile OS, continue reading for further details and installation instructions.

Released just hours ago, this working Windows Phone 7 ROM is the result of very tedious effort by all the members of DFT. There are a LOT more images available at the DFT site as well as further details and they have done their best to include English translation of the predominantly Chinese text there as well.

The developers have also put up a few videos to guide you through the installation procedure as well as to show you Windows Phone 7 in action on their HTC HD2, and we are embedding them here for you to enjoy. Here is the first one that briefly guides through the installation procedure:

Here is one taken immediately after the installation and demonstrates WP7 in action on the HD2:

And lastly, this one here is a detailed guide for the entire installation and setup procedure plus a detailed demonstration of WP7 running on the device:

Now coming to what works and what not – almost every feature works including Windows Phone 7 UI, battery charging, phone functions, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Multitouch, accelerometer, autorotation, automatic and manual brightness adjustment, USB support, SD card support, Office, Picture gallery, audio and video playback with Zune, SMS, contacts, lock screen, camera and even 720P video recording. The only glitch at the moment is with the flash not syncing properly while taking pictures. More details can be found on the DFT website.

UPDATE: You no longer need to follow the following installation procedure as the primary tool used in this guide has been updated and we have covered the latest version in a new guide. The newer version adds some enhancements and many steps from this guide are no longer required. Furthermore, we have made the new guide more descriptive while at the same time easier to follow. See how to install Windows Phone 7 on HTC HD2 with MAGLDR.

Unfortunately, two main Windows Phone 7 features i.e. downloading and installing applications from the Marketplace and Xbox Live integration are not working but that is not due to lack of their support in the ROM but rather because of protective restrictions by Microsoft that don’t let these work on non-native hardware. You can still browse through Marketplace apps and open the Xbox Live interface.

EDIT: You can get Live Services including Marketplace and XBox Live fully working using this method, thanks to ceesheim of XDA-Developers. Cheers to our friends at MobilityDigest who recently made a reference to our guide and added the information to get these services working.

Disclaimer: Please follow this guide at your own risk. AddictiveTips will not be liable if your device gets damaged or bricked during the process.

If you have had enough details and want to install Windows Phone 7 to your HD2 right away, you can refer to the videos for the download instructions. Though for those of you who have trouble following those instructions, here is what you will need to do:

1. Download the Windows Phone 7 ROM from the link given below and extract its contents to your computer.
2. Make sure that you  have HARDSPL 2.08 installed as it is required before you can install MAGLDR in the next step. Also note that your radio needs to be 2.**.50.**. A recommended 2.15.50.14 radio can be found here.
3. Connect your HD2 to your computer via USB and run ‘ROMUpdateUtility.exe’ from the MAGLDR 1.2 folder at the location where you extracted the ROM in Step 1.
4. Follow the on-screen instructions to install MAGLDR on your HD2 and reboot your phone. Your phone will boot into MAGLDR now.
5. Navigate to the 5th option which says ‘USB Flasher’ using the volume-down key and press the green ‘call’ key to enter it.
6. Now run ‘DWI.exe’ from the folder where you extracted the ROM.
7. Read the information carefully and follow the on-screen instructions to flash the Windows Phone 7 ROM to your HD2.
8. Once the installation is complete, your phone will reboot into MAGDLR again. Use the volume-down button to the second option that says ‘Boot AD NAND’ and press the green ‘call’ button.
9. Your phone will now boot into the newly installed Windows Phone 7. The first boot may take a while. Follow the on-screen instructions to setup your Windows Phone 7 installation for the first time.
10. Follow this guide to get Live Services including Marketplace and XBox Live fully working on your device.

Congratulations – you now have Windows Phone 7 running natively on your HTC HD2. Though having to select the second option from MAGLDR every time you restart your phone to boot into Windows Phone 7 can be a hassle. Fortunately, you can set MAGLDR to automatically boot your phone into Android each time you restart it.

We have already covered this procedure in our guide on installing Android 2.2 FroYo on the internal NAND memory of HTC HD2. Just visit this guide, skip the first set of 8 instructions which are for the Android installation procedure itself, and just follow the second set which has 9 instructions, to set your HD2 up to boot automatically into Windows Phone 7.

Credit for the image, videos as well as MAGLDR (and obviously this ROM itself) goes to DFT.

Download Windows Phone 7 for HTC HD2