• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Root Ascend help with some kinks mostly customizations

S

steelrain

Newbie
Hi there, first post here I've been reading the forums for a few days hoping to figure this out. I bought the Ascend TapOut edition phone (link to phone as it came with 2.2 OS). It's great as far as stock goes, but if I'm on here obviously I wanna do more with it
%29.gif
.

Anyway, I've got z4root installed, works great (or does it?) as I'm able to use androotfile and TiBu is able to start. However thats where it ends. TiBu starts however no matter what program I choose to uninstall I get "failed to locate" message. So thats stopping from the bloat removal.

The other thing that is going on is I've tried and tried again to use Boot Animations Installer to get rid of the horrid MetroPCS bootup screen however, when I reboot it's still the same thing instead of the selected one from the menu. I know it downloads the bootscreen zip file to the sdcard I even tried to copy it over to the /system/media but it doesn't work.

However, as far as the boot I noticed at the top it says 170 total and 170 used (using androotfile)

So I'm guessing there is not enough room which is why the boot never changes right?

Which brings me back to figuring why TiBu doesn't uninstall anything. I tried reinstalling and it still does the same thing so where do I begin looking to figure out whats hanging it up?

Only changes to the phone is a live background which is that green droid with the particles that I found on here, and rooting otherwise it's a bonestock phone. Sorry for the Novel but I'm a little lost, I do think however it's neat for the system structure it is a lot like slackwares setup.

EDIT: TiBu in case it's not used like that here is titanium backup

I even tried following this youtube guide with no success.
 
steelrain said:
Hi there, first post here I've been reading the forums for a few days hoping to figure this out. I bought the Ascend TapOut edition phone (link to phone as it came with 2.2 OS). It's great as far as stock goes, but if I'm on here obviously I wanna do more with it
%29.gif
.

Anyway, I've got z4root installed, works great (or does it?) as I'm able to use androotfile and TiBu is able to start. However thats where it ends. TiBu starts however no matter what program I choose to uninstall I get "failed to locate" message. So thats stopping from the bloat removal.

The other thing that is going on is I've tried and tried again to use Boot Animations Installer to get rid of the horrid MetroPCS bootup screen however, when I reboot it's still the same thing instead of the selected one from the menu. I know it downloads the bootscreen zip file to the sdcard I even tried to copy it over to the /system/media but it doesn't work.

However, as far as the boot I noticed at the top it says 170 total and 170 used (using androotfile)

So I'm guessing there is not enough room which is why the boot never changes right?

Which brings me back to figuring why TiBu doesn't uninstall anything. I tried reinstalling and it still does the same thing so where do I begin looking to figure out whats hanging it up?

Only changes to the phone is a live background which is that green droid with the particles that I found on here, and rooting otherwise it's a bonestock phone. Sorry for the Novel but I'm a little lost, I do think however it's neat for the system structure it is a lot like slackwares setup.

EDIT: TiBu in case it's not used like that here is titanium backup

I even tried following this youtube guide with no success.
Click to expand...
Are you sure the z4root worked? Does it say you have superuser permissions? Now that I think about it, someone else with the tapout was having that same problem. I can't remember if it was resolved or not. I'll have to look around and see if I can find that again.
 
- Delete metros boot up zip file and the ogg sound file and replace it with your own
-To unistall apps on Tibu - Hard hold the app on Tibu you want to remove and scroll to the bottom to click unistall. If done correctly your phone should reboot twice and the app will officially be gone
( Make sure z4root is on Permanent Root )
 
-Lulu said:
- Delete metros boot up zip file and the ogg sound file and replace it with your own
-To unistall apps on Tibu - Hard hold the app on Tibu you want to remove and scroll to the bottom to click unistall. If done correctly your phone should reboot twice and the app will officially be gone
( Make sure z4root is on Permanent Root )
Click to expand...
reboot twice just to uninstall an app? Mine doesn't do that. Or is that something just for the tapout edition?
 
Gmash - When I go into z4root it says reroot or unroot. I hope it's not just a tapout problem I mean it's 2.2 android so it shouldn't be too big of a deal. I'll appreciate you looking into the other tapout user.

Lulu - I'll try deleting instead and see if the replacement is close enough in size. As for TiBu I get the option to uninstall I just get "Failed to find apk" but I'll try that one more time here in a few minutes.

Both Lulu and Gmash as far as restarting twice I haven't gotten it to uninstall so I can't confirm that it does or doesn't restart. We'll see what happens when I try again.
 
steelrain said:
Gmash - When I go into z4root it says reroot or unroot. I hope it's not just a tapout problem I mean it's 2.2 android so it shouldn't be too big of a deal. I'll appreciate you looking into the other tapout user.

Lulu - I'll try deleting instead and see if the replacement is close enough in size. As for TiBu I get the option to uninstall I just get "Failed to find apk" but I'll try that one more time here in a few minutes.

Both Lulu and Gmash as far as restarting twice I haven't gotten it to uninstall so I can't confirm that it does or doesn't restart. We'll see what happens when I try again.
Click to expand...
Well if it says reroot/unroot, that should mean it worked. I found the other thread, they never posted the solution. It is in the "ultimate customization guide" in the "all things root" section if you want to see what they tried. Sorry I couldn't be more help. I'm sure somebody will be able to help you out. Welcome to the forum!
 
I am having a problem removing the bloatware (might be me you're referring to). I'm thinking the apk files are somewhere else on this particular build. or is part of the kernel or something.
 
ive also noticed I am crippled in setting custom notification sounds. I can set my phone ringtone, but for notifications (gmail, sms, etc), I can only chose from what metro offers, and not my own that I have in the "ringtones" folder on the sd card
 
Ok tried updating TiBu and appkik, still no go, I can set any ringtone or txt msg alert sound I want however.

And I'm beginning to wonder where the apk are hidden at so we can both see where they are at. If more users of this model find they are in the same place it will definitely help other people.

I'm surprised more people aren't having the same problem.
 
i imagine maybe not all are rooting their phones. I figure some are having the issue and probably think something is wrong with the phone. everyday i go in and try something else. very interesting scenario.
 
oh, and i created a "notifications" folder and moved the files there, now I can see them in my choices
 
Ok /cust/metropcs/us/app is where uno.apk loopt.apk TapouT.apk etc all the bloatware were looking for. Now if only TiBu could have found it on it's own. The search in ASTRO file manager was awesome I used the free one too.

Question I have is now that we know where those are at, do we need to manually delete them and if so will it remove it from our app choices as well?
 
Update: ok, was able to get rid of the "metropcs hello hello hello wireless for all" audio and it is now replaced with the basic "Droidddd" audio so one up.

The bootscreen has yet to change but I'm working on it. I'm wondering if it's because it is a 'live' as in the picture 'moves' instead of a plain still picture. Not quite sure yet.

One thing I did see, while looking at the stock image and the replacement in the desc files within the zips, the original is as follows:
320 480 1
p 1 1 part0
p 0 1 part1
and the replacement:
480 480 30
p 1 0 part0
p 0 0 part1
EDIT (has to do with next post): screen size is important however it's not the main problem of changing the image, I think I found it. Anyone with more droid knowledge can chime in on this, as I'm going based off of outdated linux experience granted slackware was always touchy..

So the size is different. I'm going to look for an alternate that has one the same size and see if it works then.. dunno. I'll keep you posted since I know pcdebb is having the same problem.

I did in fact completely wipe the original audio boot file, then copy the replacement afterward. unrooted for giggles and restarted and bam it was working with the replacement. I have since rerooted (go z4root for being able to switch back and forth) and still working on it.
 
Ok, so also under the cust directory there is a media folder in there.. with you guessed it, bootanimation.zip!

however, it is setup as read only for that cust directory so A) haven't been able to delete bloatware like I would like to which is kinda annoying, and B) I have a hunch that this is the boot animation we need to get to so that we can change out that damn boot screen!

Any ideas on how to force that directory to be written to even just temporarily?
 
Yeah thats the holdup now.. getting the permission to change those files has stumped me pretty damn quick.. at least that audio is changed for now. If I come up with anything that works I'll deff be posting it as its obvious now its a Ascend TapouT related problem.

Save some future people some headaches of having to look.
 
For changing the directory permissions? yeah none of them worked for that particular directory. It's alright though I found a solution thats working on a couple of the TapouT editions.
 
pcdebb said:
this let you change the permissions?
Click to expand...

OK. here you go.
First, don't follow any of the regular Ascend steps to delete. They will not work with the Tapout. They took steps to block users from deleting or changing things.

there are 2 ways to do this 1. from the computer (sdk tools, adn shell) 2. from your phone using terminal emulator and root explorer.

This is for way number 2

Things you will need:
Terminal emulator
Root Explorer

Your phone needs to be rooted.

Open Terminal emulator and enter:
su [ENTER}
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /cust [ENTER]

back out and go into root explorer
go to: cust/metropcs/us/app

click on an app you don't like and hold: click permissions and change to write. click edit and delete.

your boot animation is in cust/metropcs/us/media
your boot sound is in system/media/audio/ui

keep in mind that you have set the cust folder to RW
You will need to enter the mount/remount info for the folder "/system" instead of "/cust" to be able to mod any files in there.

When you reboot it will revert back to read only.

That will be 5 dollars please.

Greg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom