After Rooting, I Mucked Things Up.

Start with a perfectly good HTC Desire CDMA. Root it successfully, but never install Google Apps - just run the latest stable CM7 rom and tack on some APKs.

Now upgrade to the HTC Hero and give the Desire to your non-techie sibling as a wifi-only game pad. Tell him if he wants Google Apps he should install it himself. Leave him alone with the phone for 3 months.

Now stare at the mind-boggling pile of fuck that your brother has created and wonder how the hell you can ever get this right again.

TL;DR My brother tried to add gapps to a non-Google CM7 rom and messed it up somehow. I knew enough to root the phone successfully, but whenever I try to flash the phone back to non-gapp CM7 it just deletes user data and keeps the gapps artifacts. There are errors galore, some buttons aren't working and the battery life is about half what it should be. Help!