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Root HELP! my droid is on a loop.

S

smittty1911

Lurker
Hey there, so I bought this Eris from a guy in hopes of reprogramming it to Cricket. I used Reflash to root it and then went into clockwork mod to make a recovery file. however i accidently wiped all the data off before i did it. now it will turn on but it is stuck on the white screen, however i can still boot to clockwork, i downloaded a rom to flash back to the original droid 2.1 setting, however when i try the restore it says MD5 mismatch! ugh, did i brick this thing?
 
Let's start with these questions:

- WTH is "Reflash"?

- What Version # does Clockwork show when it comes up? and

- From where have you been getting your rooting advice?

Next,

- Not "some ROM", but which ROM exactly?

- Do you have the ability to copy files to and from the SD card, either by using the Clockwork menus, or with a media reader?

- Did you check the exact size of the ROM file you downloaded? How about it's MD5 signature?

- Last, when you mention the MD5 error, are you talking about trying to flash the ROM file you downloaded, or a backup that you made.


There are lots of possible reasons for what you are seeing, but the most likely one is that the download of the ROM file got botched (usually, truncated). That's why it's a good idea to check it's exact size and/or MD5 checksum before you use it.



eu1


PS Don't spam the board with multiple identical posts in different locations. Bad form.
 
erisuser1 said:
Let's start with these questions:

- WTH is "Reflash"?

- What Version # does Clockwork show when it comes up? and

- From where have you been getting your rooting advice?

Next,

- Not "some ROM", but which ROM exactly?

- Do you have the ability to copy files to and from the SD card, either by using the Clockwork menus, or with a media reader?

- Did you check the exact size of the ROM file you downloaded? How about it's MD5 signature?

- Last, when you mention the MD5 error, are you talking about trying to flash the ROM file you downloaded, or a backup that you made.


There are lots of possible reasons for what you are seeing, but the most likely one is that the download of the ROM file got botched (usually, truncated). That's why it's a good idea to check it's exact size and/or MD5 checksum before you use it.



eu1


PS Don't spam the board with multiple identical posts in different locations. Bad form.
Click to expand...

im sorry reflash is actually called unrevoked 3,

yes i can copy files to the SDcard both by mounting through clockwork and my computer.

the rom is called xtrasense, and i have no idea what md5 means :(

the size of the rom file is 166mb and it gives the error when i try to install the rom or when i try to use a backup.
 
smittty1911 said:
im sorry reflash is actually called unrevoked 3,

yes i can copy files to the SDcard both by mounting through clockwork and my computer.

the rom is called xtrasense, and i have no idea what md5 means :(

the size of the rom file is 166mb and it gives the error when i try to install the rom or when i try to use a backup.
Click to expand...

xtrSENSE I believe you meant to say. But what version? 4.6.5?

Note that right under the download link on this XDA page for xtrSENSE 4.6.5, there is this line:

MD5 checksum: bfab4d92f60cae8fa5abb6aab2181e42
Click to expand...

an "MD5 checksum" is the output of a program that you can run on your own PC that creates that string you see above (actually, a very, very big hexadecimal number), by computing it from the contents of a file you give to it (the MD5 program) If even a single byte of the file changed, or was one byte longer or shorter, that "checksum" would look completely different.

So, when you download a file off the internet, and the author says "the MD5 checksum is blah blah blah", you can use a MD5 checksum program on your own computer to make sure any file you download is exactly the same as the one the developer had "in his own hands".

Go onto CNET downloads and find yourself a MD5 program. Or use this one - open source/ Windows

I just downloaded the file "xtrSENSE4.6.5.zip", and verified it's checksum. I got the same value; so I know it is the correct file. It's size is exactly 125,453,133 bytes. Not approximately, but EXACTLY.

That right there tells me that either you are downloading something else that what I am working with, or ???

eu1
 
erisuser1 said:
xtrSENSE I believe you meant to say. But what version? 4.6.5?

Note that right under the download link on this XDA page for xtrSENSE 4.6.5, there is this line:



an "MD5 checksum" is the output of a program that you can run on your own PC that creates that string you see above (actually, a very, very big hexadecimal number), by computing it from the contents of a file you give to it (the MD5 program) If even a single byte of the file changed, or was one byte longer or shorter, that "checksum" would look completely different.

So, when you download a file off the internet, and the author says "the MD5 checksum is blah blah blah", you can use a MD5 checksum program on your own computer to make sure any file you download is exactly the same as the one the developer had "in his own hands".

Go onto CNET downloads and find yourself a MD5 program.

I just downloaded the file xtrSENSE4.6.5.zip", and verified it's checksum. I got the same value; so I know it is the correct file. It's size is exactly 125,453,133 bytes. Not approximately, but EXACTLY.

That right there tells me that either you are downloading something else that what I am working with, or ???

eu1
Click to expand...

yes, its 4.6.5 and i downloaded a md5checksum program now what file do i want to check? it wont let me select the whole folder.
i was told just to put the whole folder into the root SDcard, is there just a specific file i should be putting into the sdcard? thanks for all your help im a bigtime noob.
 
smittty1911 said:
yes, its 4.6.5 and i downloaded a md5checksum program now what file do i want to check? it wont let me select the whole folder.
i was told just to put the whole folder into the root SDcard, is there just a specific file i should be putting into the sdcard? thanks for all your help im a bigtime noob.
Click to expand...

It should not be a "folder" - it is supposed to be a single ".zip" file.

It would only be a "folder" if you unpacked it, although Windows Explorer has a habit of showing a "compressed folder icon" when it is a zip file.

You give the MD5 program the name of the .zip file, and it will compute the MD5.

Also, you should be able to highlight the .zip file in Windows Explorer, right-click on it, and select the item "Properties" to see what size it is.

Do that and tell me if the size/MD5 match... and then also tell me whether you are doing this on a copy of the file on your computer, or the one that is actually on the SD card.
 
While I was waiting, I wrote these instructions on how to safely transfer big files from a PC to a USB drive. Lots of people screw this up because they do not correctly disconnect the remote drive when they are done copying files.


If you are transferring files to and from your phone via the USB cable, and your PC is a Windows machine, there is one right way to do it, and many wrong ways to do it.

Let's suppose you are going to copy a big file (like a ROM file) from your PC to the phone's SD card. Here's the proper steps you take:

1) Plug the phone and the computer together with the USB cable.
2) On the phone, use the menu item which mounts the SD to the PC

3) You should see some automatic activity pop up on the PC - perhaps a file browser or something.
4) Copy the file you want to transfer from the PC to whatever drive the SD card is mounted at: E:, F:, G: ... wherever it is mounted.

5) After the copying is apparently finished, wait a couple of seconds or so.

7) Make sure that the File Explorer you are using is no longer "exploring" the mounted drive (E:, F:, G:, whatever) - focus it on the "C:" drive someplace instead.

(Steps 8 and 9 are where people usually screw up - they forget to do these steps)

8) Using the "Safely Eject Hardware" control in your system tray, eject the appropriate drive letter (E:, F:, G:, whatever).

9) Now, WAIT until you get the little pop-up balloon which says "Safe to Remove Hardware".

10) Go back to the phone and toggle off the Mounting of the SD card to the PC using the menu on the phone. (You can leave the USB cable plugged in if you want).


A lot of people somehow manage to "get away with" skipping steps 6-8; it works fine if small files are involved. But when you are transferring big files like a ROM file - 100+ MB, the "copy" operation appears to finish (from the user's perspective) - even though copying is still going on in the background. If you don't disconnect properly, the file gets corrupted on the destination drive.


This is the reason that I asked you to check the file size and MD5 signature ON THE SD CARD, not the copy on your computer - to make sure that it got safely and completely transfered there.


eu1
 
smitty

I keep re-reading this sentence, and there is something about it that mystifies me.

smittty1911 said:
i downloaded a rom to flash back to the original droid 2.1 setting, however when i try the restore it says MD5 mismatch! ugh, did i brick this thing?
Click to expand...

Normally, for a ROM file that you downloaded yourself, Clockwork recovery would never say "MD5 mismatch" - it would only say that if you were attempting to restore a backup that got corrupted - not when you were installing a ROM file.

And yet your sentence suggests that you were seeing that error when dealing with a "ROM file".

Normally, if you are going to flash a ROM, you do three steps using the Clockwork menus:

(1) Factory Reset / Wipe Data
(2) Choose file to flash from SD card (or something similar, I can't remember the exact words)
(3) Reboot

I'm wondering if your difficulty is from to trying to use the Backup/Restore menu when you should be choosing the "Flash zip from SD card" menu.

???

In step (2) above, you would be navigating using the Clockwork interface until you found the ROM .zip file (e.g. "xtrSENSE4.6.5.zip").

Maybe that helps.

eu1
 
I got it running! thanks so much. now I programmed everything is the ##778 as per instructions I received from another site, I am able to call/text both receive and send, however I can only connect to the web through wifi. Any tips on getting 3g up and running? I have already gotten on the android plan through cricket. If this is the wrong forum could you point me in the right direction? Thanks again.
 
OK.

If you are going to be using Clockwork, you should take heed of my warnings to check your downloaded files: either exact file sizes, or MD5 signatures, or - in the case of ROM .zip files for the Eris, you can perform a signature check before you even boot into the recovery.

AndroidForum's "scary alien" has a free utility app on the Android Market called "AFV (Android File Verifier)" - it can compute MD5 signatures of files, and also perform ROM signature verification, too. In that app, this is called "verify JAR-type file" ... because both Android app files (.apk) and ROM .zip files are Java ".jar" storage formats. They contain a checksum for every file stored in the .zip, and the file containing the checksums is digitally signed. That means that if a single byte is wrong, you will know it.

Doing a "jar verify" can be useful even if the ROM developer forgot to publish his exact file size or MD5 signature - you can't be certain it is exactly the same file that the developer had, but you can be absolutely certain that the file didn't get mangled when you downloaded it.

eu1
 
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