The Quick GPS (or whatever, it scrolled out of view) lets you get a fix from the satellites more quickly by letting the phone know the satellites' rough positions to start with. If the phone starts from scratch it might take a long time to get a fix, or even time out. As a lot of applications have limited error messages, it might re-use 'weak signal' in this case.

I expect that you don't need a SIM card at all, at least in Sprint territory. I have non-Sprint Sim cards in mine and it works fine in Europe and in the US where it is not using the SIM card.

Between technology/cost and power available, phones don't seem to have the best GPS performance. It is likely that you do have bad reception. Sometimes there are only a few satellites visible, and they may be on the horizon and blocked by trees, buildings, etc. You'll have to compare your phone to another in the same situation to see if it is a bad phone.

I did all of that and the Gps now works but my phone doesnt have the option of automatically refreshing when it experied. It says, " 7 day, 0 hrs". Does this mean after 7 days i will have to follow this process of downloading the satellites again?

Sprint GPS doesn't actually use GPS system as in 'using satellites' it uses its transmission towers to triangulate your position. So besides maintaining a signal with 1 tower it has to download the position and data of nearby towers. When it does that It simply guesses where you are in relation to the signal strength of the one tower you are maintaining the signal with. If you spend most of your time in same area downloading satellites once is enough. When you do move to a different area (20-30miles) you definitely need to download new data and maybe do it few times to see if it makes a difference. Again, this is not actual GPS but data network so after you download, give it 5-10mins to work.

Another issue comes up when you are in the area when you get signal from 2 towers only  (happens to me in south FL all the time) the phone gives me wrong location and heading for 20-30mins before correcting itself. Data coverage in FL is horrible, no use for HTC.