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Root [FAQ]ROOTING (Updated 7th April 2012)

I don't know. This is all for the HTC desire. I think there will be an x8 forum here. Best place to look.
 
About goldcard: "Branded phones need a gold card to de-brand." How can I tell if my phone is branded, what does this mean exactly?
HTC Desire
CDMA US Cellular
 
It means the cellphone network operator has applied its branding to the phone prior to selling the phone.

Three ways that you can tell if your phone is cell phone operator branded:

  • if it has a logo of the network operator on the phone itself (on the front/rear)e.g o2, 3, Orange, Sprint, Verizon.
  • When you turn on your phone you will the network operator splash screen in addition to the manufacturer splash screen e.g say if I went to Orange store and bought a HTC phone, when I start the phone I will see HTC splash screen and then the orange splash screen.
  • When you browse your phone, you should see software that is bundled by the network operator(aka bloatware).
Hope this answers your question :)
 
Plus CDMA are branded anyway. CDMA is a different story really as there arent many competitors on CDMA with different ROMS. I think Bell can use USCC roms but thats about it.
 
Thanks for the guide, worked a dream.

I'm currently creating a nandroid backup and i noticed that whilst it was doing it, it came up with the line:

No sd-ext found. Skipping backup of sd-ext.

Is this a problem?

EDIT: PROBLEM!

Tried to reboot my phone but it now just cycles through the white HTC logo over and over...

I did not flash a rom, i simply created a nandroid and titanium backup of the phone.

EDIT 2: Did a nandroid restore and that fixed it, any idea what caused the phone not to boot correctly?
 
SUroot said:
By reading post #1 of this thread. I put this faq together to save me writing it every time I was asked. This is already covered
Click to expand...

Its been a while since i tried to root my desire, i was getting confused with all the terminology. Im back again with hope to succeed this time.

Please i understand i need now to downgrade to hope to get this working, however after downgrade do i have to make another goldcard ect or does this remain?

I have just re read the two threads but am still a bit hazy as there is so much to take in for a newbie. Im desperate now to be able to use my phone again as i have only 3 messages and it says unable to use!!
 
A gold card remains a goldcard unless you partition it. The gold card image is written to the boot sector of the sd card which is never overwritten even with a format unless you partition the card as this needs to write to the same place
 
DexKen said:
I would just like to thank Danfrance for this excellent FAQ. Having grown tired of memory issues I decided to bite the bullet and root so I could install the rooted stock rom with apps2sd+, what a difference it has made!!

My phone was down to 18mb free (and this was after removing flash updates) and now with everything back installed on the phone I have 97Mb free :-)

I had a major issue with unrevoked3 failing every time on both my win7 machine and my mac, after much head scratching I remembered something important, previously I had used this guide (Lorin Bute - Home - How to force apps to move to the SD card onFroyo) to allow me to force apps to sd by setting "pm setInstallLocation 2" and it was this that was borking unrevoked3 as it was installing the rooting service to sd and on reboot the sdcard was not being mounted quick enough, changing back to "pm setInstallLocation 0" fixed the problem and the root worked perfectly.

It might be worth making an entry in the FAQ about anyone having done the "force apps to SD" trick in the past to undo it before rooting.
Click to expand...
Hello all,
I'm slowly getting ready to root my desire but at the moment i'm trying to get as much info about how to do it ...
DexKen, you mentioned the word 'mac' in your post and this a question that i was afraid to ask because i know that a few andoiders are very anti mac.
I do enjoy my imac but i also looove my desire (wouldn't touch a iphone with a barge pole)
How easy is it to root my htc via a mac and what do i have to download and from where?? Is it mac compatible?
Sorry for going on and on but i'm still trying to get all the info i need befor i jump into the deep end....
The FAQ is brill by the way !!!
 
Another question please: My htc is from vodafone but unlike all my previous phones this one has got no vodafone markings and when i switch it on nothing vodafone-like apears after (or before) the htc logo splashes over the screen after i switch it on.
The only bit of vf i can find is if i go to my sim toolkit.
Does that mean it's unbranded ?? which is very unusal in my vf experience S-:
 
unrevoked for mac is fine - as is usual with Mac/Linux versions, main difference is that it's self-contained, so no need to muck about with drivers before it will work.

Edit: The one catch is that if you just google "unrevoked" it takes you to their site as top hit, but that offers version 3.32 as the download. 3.21 is generally preferred (except in a few special cases, described in the faq), so the 3.21 download for Mac is here.

No special trick to finding that - I looked at their download's url and just changed the version number ;)
 
SUroot said:
The software version tells you if its branded or not. What is it?

You can get unrevoked for mac. Never used it though
Click to expand...

This is the spec of my device:
android version: 2.2
baseband ver.: 32.49.00.32U_5.11.05.27
kernel ver:2.6.32.15-g2633d94
htc-kernel@and18-2 1
build no. 2.33.161.2CL284385 release-keys
software no:2.33.161.2
browser ver: WebKit3.1
 
That's a Vodafone software version.

You should also go to the bootloader (boot phone while holding the "volume down" key down) and check the PVT version (you'll be able to read it off the bootloader screen). If it's PVT-4 you need to do one more check, as described in the FAQ. Otherwise (PVT 1 to 3) then just use unrevoked, no special instructions.
 
OK, then you are fine - no special measures should be needed for that phone.

We generally recommend making a goldcard, particularly with branded phones - it just gives you more options if you need to use a ROM Update Utility (RUU) to fix a major software problem. But there is an RUU matching that software and radio version at shipped-ROMs, so you should be OK if you need to unroot for warranty purposes.
 
if i make a goldcard and root the phone at a later stage does it matter or will it interfere with the phone until i root it?
Sorry for all the questions ... am very grateful for the info on this forum (-:
 
No, they are quite independent things. A goldcard can be used as an ordinary SD card, and has no effect on the phone's functioning. Rooting does not actually require a goldcard either.

The only role of the goldcard is to allow you to run an RUU other than the one corresponding to your phone's original branding (or lack of). This is essential if there isn't an RUU for your network (Orange UK, for example). For others it's mainly a precaution - if for any reason your network RUU doesn't work you have the option of trying a different one, but if your network one works then the goldcard isn't needed. The reason making one is recommended is simply that it's safer to have one and never need it than to need one and not have it.
 
Hi, and sorry to say my first post is asking for help please.
I have a Desire PVT4 erasesize 40,000 and after my first root attempt a couple days a go which did gain me root but without backup ability I then found this post about the erase size, so I ran unrevoked again and set to custom recovery and used recovery-RA-desire-v2.0.1.img.
Everything looked to be going OK in the rooting sequence of unrevoked until right at the very end I get a message of Error: failed to get root. Is your firmware to new?
I do have root as I checked using the applicatoin rootchecker which still says root present, but busybox is not installed on checking that. I do also have superuser permissions showing in apps (that did get put there when I ran unrevoked the first time). So I have almost got it working perhaps? My phone is happy to reboot into HBoot and then power back on (thankfully) and the stock OS is still running fine.
PVT4 SIHP S-ON
HBoot 0.93.001
Software Number 2.29.405.5
Screen is a SLCD
Radio 5.11.05.27

On what I found to read it seemed that my phone was not to new although it does have the erasesize of 40,000 so I had expected it to work on re running with the RA image instead of clockworkmod.

I am after flashing my ROM with a Gingerbread rom. I don't mind about gaining S-OFF if I can flash ROMS without it then that's good for me. I do want to be able to backup my installed working ROM first so that will be required. I do not need apps2sd so wont be doing that bit and my phone is unbranded so don't need a goldcard. I have identified my original RUU and got a copy of that.

Maybe I worked it out maybe I used the wrong custom image and it should have been AmonRA 2.0.1 if that is different to what I used which I had thought was that. Well scrub that idea as I had used the right file from my double checking :|

Any help greatly appreaciated please and I am new to all this so I will do my best to understand any replies.
 
happy-kat said:
Hi, and sorry to say my first post is asking for help please.
I have a Desire PVT4 erasesize 40,000 and after my first root attempt a couple days a go which did gain me root but without backup ability I then found this post about the erase size, so I ran unrevoked again and set to custom recovery and used recovery-RA-desire-v2.0.1.img.
Everything looked to be going OK in the rooting sequence of unrevoked until right at the very end I get a message of Error: failed to get root. Is your firmware to new?
I do have root as I checked using the applicatoin rootchecker which still says root present, but busybox is not installed on checking that. I do also have superuser permissions showing in apps (that did get put there when I ran unrevoked the first time). So I have almost got it working perhaps? My phone is happy to reboot into HBoot and then power back on (thankfully) and the stock OS is still running fine.
PVT4 SIHP S-ON
HBoot 0.93.001
Software Number 2.29.405.5
Screen is a SLCD
Radio 5.11.05.27

On what I found to read it seemed that my phone was not to new although it does have the erasesize of 40,000 so I had expected it to work on re running with the RA image instead of clockworkmod.

I am after flashing my ROM with a Gingerbread rom. I don't mind about gaining S-OFF if I can flash ROMS without it then that's good for me. I do want to be able to backup my installed working ROM first so that will be required. I do not need apps2sd so wont be doing that bit and my phone is unbranded so don't need a goldcard. I have identified my original RUU and got a copy of that.

Maybe I worked it out maybe I used the wrong custom image and it should have been AmonRA 2.0.1 if that is different to what I used which I had thought was that. Well scrub that idea as I had used the right file from my double checking :|

Any help greatly appreaciated please and I am new to all this so I will do my best to understand any replies.
Click to expand...
hi there
use the earlier version of unrevoked (3.21) which should allow you to flash amonRA correctly
 
Thank you, I will try that later this afternoon and let you know how it goes.

Though currently struggling to find that verson to download from somewhere.
Edit, found it :)
 
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