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

Root Can I root?

Hi all,

I was looking over all the excellent advice in here about rooting my phone. But it sounds like you have to have your phone booted to do it? My phone for some reason (and I don't know why because I've always been a bit nervous about rooting) is stuck at the black screen with the red droid eye. It'll say "droid" once and then it just reboots and goes through the first white screen and then the next "quietly incredible" or whatever it says screen.

So... since I can't get the phone all the way booted up, what are my options for making this thing operational again?

Thanks.
 
I saw that earlier but stopped reading when I got to instruction #3:

3.) Attach phone to PC with USB debugging on and in disk drive mode.

Now this may be a dumb question and if so I hope you'll bear with me but if my phone won't get past the droid eye screen and boot all the way up, will the PC recognize it? But it sounds like I could format the SD card on my computer, load the PB31IMG.ZIP file to the SD card on the computer and then sneakernet that to the phone and go from there. Any reason the phone NEEDS to be hooked up to the computer?
 
So I got as far as:

8.) PB31IMG.zip should be automatically recognized in hboot. Press volume up to continue with update. Do NOT interrupt.

And it was automatically recognized. And I pressed volume up and said yes, to do the update. However, the update appears to have failed. Eventually the HTC Incredible screen came up and then again the "quietly something" screen came up and then the red eye screen where it says "droid". But then it froze on the red eye again and rebooted itself.

I also tried to do the RUU update I saw mentioned somewhere, but since HTC Sync doesn't recognize my phone (since I can't get it booted up to get it mounted as another drive) then the RUU update also can't find my phone.

Curiously, sometimes the phone is recognized by Windows and I see 2 drives added to the My Computer window (one for the phone's onboard storage and one for the SD card if memory serves) but when I click on them Windows says "Please insert media in drive J:" or something very similar to that.

Any suggestions what to try next?
 
Sounds like it's back to the ally, but good news is the galaxy nexus and motorola Droid razr are being announced today.

Possible November 10th release date
 
I found a couple of other things i'm going to try. Not eligible for a new phone at a discount until December and this Ally is driving me absolutely bonkers. But thanks for the help.... I sure do appreciate it.

Oh, one more quick question..... if I ever do get this phone working again and get my phone number transferred back over to it, then I should be able to practice rooting a phone on this Ally, right? I don't need to have the phone actually activated to root it, right? Just figured I'd learn on that first and then do it to my Incredible.

Thanks again for all the help.
 
I'd keep trying to install that PB31IMG.zip file. Verify the md5 code matches exactly. That's basically your only hope, unless you feel like messing with adb and rewriting the partitions, but that'd be a longshot fix.

The ally root methods and the incredible root methods are different. But installing custom roms etc is similar.
 
I did verify the md5 before I started, but thanks. Hmmmmmm.... since I don't know what adb is I guess I'd better pass. But thanks again for all your help.
 
Hey, one more quick question, if you would be so kind as to continue to help this newbie. The error messages mentioned in post 3 of this thread (yeah, it's from another board, but I've been looking everywhere for an answer) SOLVED: messed up partitions on internal storage - CyanogenMod Forum are almost exactly the same (if not exact) as what I'm getting when I try recovery. I was thinking of trying to solution as detailed in post 7 of that thread. But I don't know anything about adb or the shell on a droid. Also, it mentions working recovery... well, the recovery program appears to be working until it gets to what I now presume to be a messed up partition.

So, that all being said, I'm just wondering where I can get basic working knowledge of adb and shell on a droid. What is adb and/or what does it stand for? If I knew that maybe I could google a tutorial or something.

Sorry to present you with something from a different board, but I really have been searching Google and trying anything.
 
Thanks!!! So I got the driver for the Incredible fixed so that my computer recognizes the phone in boot mode (or at least doesn't give me an error that it can't find the driver). And in computer management the computer is seeing my phone. But when I issue the adb command "adb devices" the computer is not seeing any devices.

I really hate to keep bothering you, but you've been kind enough to help and I was wondering if you had any idea why that situation might exist?
 
Thanks!!! So I got the driver for the Incredible fixed so that my computer recognizes the phone in boot mode (or at least doesn't give me an error that it can't find the driver). And in computer management the computer is seeing my phone. But when I issue the adb command "adb devices" the computer is not seeing any devices.

I really hate to keep bothering you, but you've been kind enough to help and I was wondering if you had any idea why that situation might exist?


I'm not too proficient in adb either, only used it once or twice. There's a couple reasons the computer won't see the phone. The most common reason is the incorrect driver. The best driver to use is the one from unrevoked's site. If that's not the one you used, I'd uninstall the one you got to work and follow their instructions for installing it.

http://unrevoked.com/rootwiki/doku.php/public/windows_hboot_driver_install
 
I'll give that a try.. thanks!

Oh, and by the way, I just posted a thread asking the same question. I'm only telling you because I didn't want you to think I was upset or anything. I TRULY appreciate all the help you've given me.
 
Back
Top Bottom