ESP32 overheating, erroring out

[thebadget]

I'm using ESP32 WROOM board. I flashed initial samples successfully (blink via ESP-IDF and switch via zerocode) and was able to run them just fine.
Then I started experiencing issues that others reported too.
1. the board would constantly blink blue led when external power supply is used and GND pin used is the one next to RST. when I switched to the one next to TX0 it started working fine. (was using it with zerocode Roller blinds and a motor driver)
2. at some point the board went into a weird state where it rapidly heats up (both the regulator and the chip), the blue led is glowing but dim. it's always in this state now - even though i removed all connections and power it from PC's usb
3. in this state it is recognized by the PC on com port, but ESP-IDF can no longer flash it and errors out with "Failed to flash because of some unusual error. Check Terminal for more details"

Is there a way I could re-flash this board?

[ESP_Sprite]

What other hardware did you connect to the ESP32? I suspect whatever you connected is out-of-spec for the ESP32 GPIO pins, blowing it up at a certain point.

[thebadget]

So you think it could be hardware damage, that would make sense.
The only thing I connected was a DRV8871 motor driver, so that would be the culprit. I was powering the ESP32 via its USB connector and the driver using an external 12V power supply. Only the GND and two signal wires were connecting ESP32 to the driver.

I now wonder, given the issue 1) i described in the original post, it looks like not all GND pins are interconnected properly. So maybe the driver was connected to the "wrong" one which somehow caused the voltage on the GPIO to be higher than acceptable.

I guess this ESP32 is a goner.