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Root help get the most performance out of a rooted incredible

scotty85

scotty85

Extreme Android User
fuzztone said:
Hello scotty85,

My DInc is rooted via unrevoked with S-off and I'm still running 2.2. I've avoided the OTA upgrades for nearly a year, mainly because I don't understand WTF most of the tech jargon or processes are, and use my Incredible almost exclusively to access the Internet.

My phone has been acting squirrely for quite awhile, the signal strength fluctuates a lot now, and many apps don't function as they did before.

After reading many threads for awhile now, I am asking to intrude into your time for some coaching assistance.

Because I'm still on 2.2 does that mean I don't need to "downgrade"?

I've removed all Verizon's files from my Windows 7 32 bit computer, and downloaded the files posted by Iowabowtech.

I have Titanium backup,and Nandroid backup capabilities, I think, but haven't a clue what to do with them.

Any simple and clear steps to get this amazing phone tweaked properly would be appreciated greatly. Any questions you have, I'll endeavor to factually respond.
-Kevin
Click to expand...

hi kevin,we would be happy to help you get things working a little better. :)

the "dowgrade" is only necessary so that an s-on phone can utilize the exploit to become s-off. since you are on froyo,and s-off,you defiantely do not need to downgrade.

you can use titanium backup to backup your user-installed apps.

a nandroid backup is more or less a "snapshot" of your current OS when you make it- down to the call log and sms that are present. restoring it brings things back to exactly like when you left it,and as such is a good failsafe to let you experiment and try things with the phone without fear of messing up what you have.

there are a couple simple things you can try to make things work a little better.

1)you can boot to recovery,and do a simple wipe of cache and dalvik cache. clearing the caches often resuces lag and minor app misbehaviour. youll find the wipe dalvik cache option in the advanced menu of clockwork recovery

2)if that doesnt work,you can backup all your apps with titanium backup,then boot to recovery
-make a nandroid backup
-chose the wipe data/factory reset option,as well as wiping cache and dalvik cache. this is known as a "full wipe" and will give you a fresh start. be prepaired it will wipe all your data,when you boot the phone back up it will be at the "chose language" screen and youll have to re-set all your apps,homescreens,ringtones,etc. titanium backup will ease this process,as you can download it from the market first,then use it to restore your other apps.

*make sure you spring for the paid version of titanium,its well worth it,as it lets you do batch backup and restores,rather than having to do them one at a time.

maybe starting with a clean slate will smoothings out for you.

above and beyond that,you can install a more modern custom rom. there are some improvements with gingerbread,and rom devs have fixed some of its issues and made it much better than the facotry released OTA pushed to phones.

i perosnally like to run AOSP roms,wich stands for android open source project. these roms are based on google code,and not htc stock roms,wich have the sense UI heavily interwoven. stock roms are larger and more complex,and take up a much larger footprint in the phones memory. AOSP roms always seem much faster and smoother to me.

my gingerbread AOSP recomendation would be cm7,its very tried,true,and stable. the UI will be very different from what youre used to,so it just depends what you prefer.

you can even try ICS(cm9) or jellybean(cm10) but they may still be missing some functionality,so it just depends what features you need and what you can live with/without

the other thing you can do is update your radio and hboot to newer versions,but you need to be cautious,as a bad flash of either can brick your phone,so you may want to take small steps and get the swing of flashing roms and other things before you do that.

when youre ready,you can download the hboot and radio from these links:
-4.08.605.15 radio and 1.07 hboot:
PB31IMG-4.08.605.15-hboot-1.07.zip
md5: PB31IMG-4.08.605.15-hboot-1.07.zip db019de010ae8ef6a2c250fd8b378ba1

PB31IMG-4.08.605.15-radio.zip
md5: PB31IMG-4.08.605.15-radio.zip cb8b3ac72c0ae13e1f088b302135bd58

check your downloaded files with an md5 summer,and make sure they match whats listed there.

now,make sure your sd card is formated to FAT32,place the file(one at a time) and rename to PB31IMG. boot to hboot(vol down+power from powered off) and the phone should find the file and ask you to update. allow the update,then allow the phone to reboot. immediately remove PB31IMG from the sd. you can repeat that process for the other file.

last and not least,ive moved your question to the forum as there are many very knowledgeable folks here who will have even more tips and advice for you. my inc hasnt been my daily driver for quite some time,so im a bit out of touch with newer roms and such for them,and also lots of folks can now benefit from the info and answers given :cool:
 
^^Great advice by Scotty as always. Since you are still 2.2 and s-off, I'm going to guess you may also still have clockworkmod as your recovery. I think my first choice would be to install a custom rom as Scotty mentioned and get yourself updated to a newer OS. I'm not exactly up on the newer/best roms for the Inc, but I can certainly do some checking around if you're interested in going this route. :)
 
I can personally attest to the greatness of Cyanogen Mod on the Incredible, i had that device for nearly a year, thought it was slow and unresponsive, but then i downloaded and installed CM7 (at the time) and it was amazing, it was like my phone came back to life, instead of it lasting 6-8 hours it was like 12-14 hours, i would highly suggest getting this for your Incredible, it will make the device a lot more enjoyable for you :)
 
I'm stuck in boot-loop. Booted into ClockworkMod Recovery v2.5.1.2 recovery and wiped cache partition and restarted. Still boot-loop. Should I wipe the "dalvic cache"?

When I looked at the files within Titanium Backup Pro that I copied from SD card to PC today, it looks like all the files in the 140MB file relate to apps.

Most of my contacts are stored at my gmail account, but not all. I'd rather not do a Factory wipe if I can restore the phone.

I'm still rooted via Unrevoked and still running 2.2

Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 
You can certainly try wiping both cache and dalvik cache. I'm beginning to fear though that you may end up needing to wipe data and either get back to square on your current setup or update via a stock ruu or wipe data/cache and flash a rom. All of the previous (except the original cache/dalvik cache wipes) involve the loss of any contacts that aren't Gmail/Google contacts. Unless you do have them saved via Titanium in which case you could try restoring your apps and ONLY the contacts if you can get back up and running.

The other possible option would be to try going into recovery and then the restore option and restore your latest nandroid. However, if you've made new non-Google contacts since that backup, you won't get them back and I think you mentioned in the PM that you've already tried the nand restore and your phone turned off and stayed like that. So if that's right, then forget that idea.
 
O.K., thanks.

Wiped Dalvik Cache and saw a notification in ClockworkMod Recoveryv2.5.1.2: E:Can't mount /dev/block/mmcblk1p2 (file exists).

Tried starting normally, and still boot-loop.

Booted into Recovery and captured with my camera the image of the message very briefly displayed on the screen:
SD Checking...
Loading...[PB31DIAG.zip]
No Image!
Loading...[PB31DIAG.nbh]
No Image or wrong image!
Loading...[PB31IMG.zip]
No image!
Loading...[PB31IMG.nbh]
No image or wrong image!

Booted into recovery again.
Chose Restore
Display Showed:
Checking MD5 sums...
Erasing boot before restore
Restoring boot image...
Restoring system
Restoring data...
Restoring datadata...
Restoring .android_secure...
Restoring cache...
sd-ext.img not found. Skipping restore if /sd-ex
t/.

Restore complete!

Tried to restart normally and still boot-loop

Booted into recovery and chose Advanced Recovery, then chose
-Restore sd-ext

Phone went through another long restore process and ended with another display I think said sd img not found...Restore Complete

I chose Reboot and Lo and Behold, the phone booted-up!!!

The boot-up was followed by many, many forceclose notices, and several apps are no longer installed on the phone, and my contact list is empty. Google Play shows "Market", and allowed me to download Joey Krim's Root Checker again, and after many attempts (interrupted by instantaneous app closures) the app confirmed that I have Root Access. I checked and found that I am still running 2.2

Phone functions to make calls...Whew...

I'm carefully lowering the hammer of the pistol which has been poised next to my skull the past two days...Ughh...Life is just a bowl of scaries... and the people in the library near me (where I've gotten Wi-Fi access) have no idea of the averted crisis...

NOW, PLEASE ADVISE AS TO WHAT I SHOULD DO TO MAKE MY DInc as good as it can be?

Releived, but confused and clueless I remain awaiting further instructions...
 
Alright, that was a slightly strange series of events, especially toward the end. I think what happened there is that you just got lucky on it booting lol. Anyway, what I would do if it were my phone (which it isn't ;)) would be to update to at least Gingerbread by way of flashing a cutom rom. Before you do that, I would update your version of clockwork recovery. The easiest way to do that is to download rom manager from the play store and there's an option to update (top-most option in the app).

Once that's done, I'd flash a stock GB rom like this one by cmlusco:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2141642

Couple positives about that one...everything should work and cmlusco frequents this forum so if there's any issues I'm sure he'd be willing to lend a hand. And since your original system data appears to be essentially missing anyway, you have little to lose by a full wipe. At this point, I think it's the only path to a smooth running phone.

So the precise steps I'd take are these:

1.) Either download the above mentioned rom directly to your phone if possible or if not, download it to a PC and then move it onto your sdcard.
2.) Update clockwork recovery via rom manager if possible. If not, we can use more forceful means to update it but it'll involve more instructs.
3.) Boot into recovery either using rom manager or turning off phone and using the volume + power method as you've already done.
4.) While in recovery, wipe data, wipe cache, wipe dalvik cache.
5.) While still in recovery, choose option to install zip from sdcard, choose zip from sdcard, select the rom and flash it.
6.) Reboot to system and you will have to set the phone back up from scratch but it should be running Gingerbread and no more issues.

At that point you can decide whether you want to re-install Titanium and try restoring ONLY market apps or you can start from scratch and download them all one by one from the Play Store.
 
sorry for the late response,havent been at the PC much the last couple days. sounds like youre on your way to recovery with iowa's excellent advice :)

if you still have issues after the rom install,i think it will be time to run an ruu,do a factory reset with the stock recovery in place,then replace your recovery.

this device is s off,correct? :)
 
Sorry, I think that means Superuser Permission something...
I know it's rooted.

How would I determine if it's s off?
 
Look in the hboot screen. It should say s on or s off at the top. :)

If you do happen to be s on,well need to get you s off before leaving froyo :)
 
Additionally, (and again please excuse my ignorance) during these processes do I always keep the connection between my phone and my laptop as "disk drive"?

BTW, I downloaded "Rom Mgr." from Play Store (which has reverted to "Market" on my phone now..?) and updated ClockworkMod Recovery
 
I'm downloading the "deodexed" version directly to SD card on phone. After reading a little about the difference on the XDA site, and making a "still in the dark" conclusion.
 
fuzztone said:
I'm downloading the "deodexed" version directly to SD card on phone. After reading a little about the difference on the XDA site, and making a "still in the dark" conclusion.
Click to expand...


Deodexed roms can be themed... Odexed are very slightly quicker booting up. There is a guide to flashing ROMs in the all things root sticky :)
 
Following Iowabowtech's instructions above, everything went as expected until I tried to install cmlusco's Stock_inc_4.08.605.19_deodexed.zip from my SD card (which I formatted (FAT 32) last night.

I saw:
Installing: /sdcard/Stock_inc_4.08.605.19_deodexed.zip
Finding update package...
Opening update package...
Installing update...
set_perm: some changes failed
E:Error in /sdcard/Stock_inc_4.08.605.19_deodexed.zip
(Status 7)
Installation aborted.

HELP PLEASE!
 
No, I didn't check MD5.

I'm still in ClockworkMod Recovery.

When I connected the phone to my laptop, Windows 7 started searching for drivers via Windows Update. Not knowing what to do, I aborted that process.

Should I let Win 7 do its thing?

How do I get out of ClkMod Recovery v5.0.2.0 ?

Sorry for my ignorance, and thank you for your attention and advice.
 
fuzztone said:
No, I didn't check MD5.

I'm still in ClockworkMod Recovery.

When I connected the phone to my laptop, Windows 7 started searching for drivers via Windows Update. Not knowing what to do, I aborted that process.

Should I let Win 7 do its thing?

How do I get out of ClkMod Recovery v5.0.2.0 ?

Sorry for my ignorance, and thank you for your attention and advice.
Click to expand...
If your phone is in an un-bootable state. To get the newly downloaded rom onto the sd card, you will have to:
try a factory reset from recovery, then reboot, or if you have a nandroid backup, restore that. And if I remember correctly, there is an option under the advanced menu in clockwork to mount the USB drive (mass storage).

Otherwise, You will have to find another way to copy the rom to the sd card, ie a card reader or any other device that your sd card will fit in and you can connect to a computer.

Don't forget to check the md5 :)

Great guide by IBT here:
http://androidforums.com/incredible-all-things-root/521423-how-flash-roms.html
 
I downloaded the same file and checked the MD5 sum as accurate.
Wiped data
Wiped partition cache
Wiped Dalvik cache (in Advanced)
Tried to flash the zip from SD card and got the exact same result.

I remember something written about needing to have current version of Google Apps on root of SD card. Should I do that? Or, what else would you advise?
 
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