Thread: HTC Desire crashed now doesn't get any further than boot screen - recover data?

Hi everyone

Had an HTC Desire (A8181) for about 14 months from O2 in the UK. I debranded it over a year ago (can't remember what with though) and it has been working fine. Rebooting randomly but not that often.

Today though the random reboot happened but it wouldn't boot up past the HTC startup screen. Took the battery out, left it for 30 mins and still doesn't get past that.
I can get into the boot menu by holding down the volume down button.

So I was going to try "clear storage" but before I do that, is there any way to access the phone memory to recover contacts and messages?
It seems they're not stored on the SD card by default - I only have my backups on there which are pretty old. I've never seen an option to backup my messages though.

The info I get at the boot menu is:
BRAVO PVT1 SHIP S-ON
HBOOT-0.93.0001
MICROP-031d
TOUCH PANEL-SYNW0101
RADIO-5.11.05.27
Aug 10 2010, 17:52:18

Is there any way to access the Desire's internal phone memory to drag stuff off before I do a "clear storage"?
Or am I basically screwed without an up to date backup of my data?

I wish all user data was stored on the SD card to prevent situations like this.

Cheers, B