I know this isn't the first time that this problem has been posted but I went through all the other posts I could find and none of the posts that worked for other people worked in my situation.

I have tried:
Pulling the phone fuse
Pulling the stereo fuse
<wait 1 month of no stereo before I finally found my code (too cheap to pay a dealer $100)>
Checked my trunk for the DB25 connector, nothing connected
Pulled my stereo out, disconnected the red phone cable and looked for bent pins, tried it again, same error.
Left the red plug unplugged, same PHONE message.
Unplugged everything.

All this with turning the car off and on intermittently and pulling the two applicable fuses.

Does anyone have any idea on what to try next, do I need to wait a certain amount of time or do things in a certain order?

How can there still be a short and me get the PHONE message if the whole red phone cable is disconnected??

Any advice appreciated...Thanks