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Root [Guide] How to setup Gparted/Alpharev (or any .ISO) with VMware Player (updated Jan 2012)

Just trying to understand. I used GParted based on SURoots excellent instructions to partition a new 8GB SD card for my wife Desire. Essentially 2 primary partitions:

1. Fat32 (the balance after 1024MB)
2. EXT4 (1024MB)

However when I tried the same for a Kingston Class 4 16GB SD Card my Desire S did not recognize it (even when I deleted the EXT4 partition and left just the FAT32). It only recognized the card after WinXP formatted it as FAT32. Why is this so?

In the end, I used Clockwordmod 4.0.4 Saga to partition the card. I'm running Virtuous Trentacinque Beta2 and the recommendation is:

FAT32 (whatever is left over)
EXT 128MB
Swap 256MB

Works very well ever since. So the question is why didn't Gparted work?
 
I am about to do this now. Once the SD has been repartitioned, can I do a restore of CM&, apps and settings with the nandroid backup (which is stored on my pc) or should I use the Titanium backup (also on the pc).

or Do I have to reflash CM7 before doing anything else?
 
If your cm7 isn't using a partition, you shouldn't need to do anything. I'm confused though, you said re-partition?
 
SUroot said:
If your cm7 isn't using a partition, you shouldn't need to do anything. I'm confused though, you said re-partition?
Click to expand...
Thanks.

I was using the term repartition a bit loosely as the original set up (at least in PC terms) could be referred to as a partition.

Can I use nandroid to restore apps or should I use Titanium?
 
You should take both but if you're adding an ext partition you won't need to restore anything or wipe anything
 
Argh! On my 64bit PC I got Gparted up and running but it could not see the SD Card. I tried another usb port and no joy. Made sure USB debugging was enabled. (but also tried without). Oddly, although the wireless mouse worked in Gparted interface, once I closed that, nothing happened when I clicked on Exit or the other icons at the top of the screen. Is this normal?

Anyway, I am now going to try to do this using usb. And if not, then I guess I am back to the unrecommeneded Rom Manager!

So, went to try it on my old Asus laptop. Linux seemed to install but stopped after about two pages of script and hung there. So no joy here either.

On second thoughts, I will try the VM ware approach.
 
Ok, tried VMWare. Got right through to Step 17 and got:
"A fault has occurred causing a virtual CPU to enter the shutdown state. If this fault had occurred outside of a virtual machine, it would have caused the physical machine to restart. The shutdown state can be reached by incorrectly configuring the virtual machine, a bug in the guest operating system, or a problem in VMware Player.Click OK to restart the virtual machine or Cancel to power off the virtual machine."


Yes I was in recovery mode and got the same message. UGH

Tried again from the CD. Gparted runs fine, but cannot see the SD Card!

HELP!
 
You're using mount usb mass storage in recovery? At what point did you plug in the device to usb? Are you refreshing devices?
 
SUroot said:
You're using mount usb mass storage in recovery? At what point did you plug in the device to usb? Are you refreshing devices?
Click to expand...

Yes , mounted usb mass storage in recovery
Plugged in device once I was into Gparted interface
Yes refreshed devices.. Also closed interface and opened again. Could only see 459GB HD and some small unallocated partitions. Nothing of around 8GB.

I have tried this a number of times now..via VM setup and from CD. I can get Gparted running ok via CD, but not see the SD card.
Weird.
 
Have tried all this again without success. I will get a sd card reader and try from there. Are there any issues with USB sdcard readers I need to be aware of?
 
Did you change from the hard drive (sda?) to the sd (sdb?) card in the top right drop down? The sd card and hdd will not show on the same disk
 
SUroot said:
Did you change from the hard drive (sda?) to the sd (sdb?) card in the top right drop down? The sd card and hdd will not show on the same disk
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the sd did not show in the drop down box. I will however have another go tonight on a different computer, otherwise I have borrowed an sd reader I can use.

BTW, how about coming to NZ to work - but probably best to dispense with the suit for interviews!
 
All done. I did a 512 EXT3 partition. The process is really very simple once you have done it. However I did have to use the sdcard reader. Lots of memory now!
 
Added this:

This process is the same for alpharev. You just change the CD ISO to the alpharev one and boot the machine. It can be used for any bootable ISO. Another good ISO to have is Plop. If you download the plop iso and boot to that, it will allow the VMware machine to boot from USB too, something the VMware BIOS does not support. See attatchment for Plop

As for some reason I had missed it out.
 
For the LULZ I tried doing this using Microsoft Virtual PC on Windows 7. I failed quite early on as you can't 'present' a USB Controller to your VM from the settings screen. You need to run the drivers to do this from within the OS and it assumes you are running a full features Windows or Linux OS and not a cut down OS like GParted. So I couldn't run the setup for it to find the USB..

Unless I'm really missing something I couldn't figure it out.

VMware Player worked first time. Very useful guide, thanks.
 
Hi. I've rooted my HTC Desire and trying to partition the Sd card prior to flashing a new ROM. I'm trying to install VMware player. Downloaded it but when i try and get it to run I get the helpful message:
The MSI
'C:\Users\Phil\Appdata\local\Temp\vmware_1336815375\vmwaremcisockets64.msi' failed
I've run MD5 Checker and the Checksum comes back as ok. I know this isn't really a Desire issue but any guidance would be much appreciated. Many thanks
 
Its beyond UAC. Its an .msi error so its beyond not having permissions to execute.

There are several reasons for this issue. The first one to check being McAfee products are not installed.
 
Thanks for the suggestions so far. No McAfee but do have Norton installed. Could disable that but I thought it'd be more of an issue for the download rather than install.
 
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