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Root What would happen?

steveo41733 said:
I was wondering what would happen if I unrooted my phone while I was running a custom ROM like kings ultra unleashed R2?
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You would be running r2 but with no root permissions...root apps wouldn't work. Assuming you don't flash the ruu and just unroot.
 
The process of unrooting does two things:

1) It switches S-OFF to S-ON. In the case of unrevoked, the first thing you do is flash the unrevoked S-ON tool to do this. If you didn't use unrevoked (i.e. rooted via the eng bootloader), then the next step will take care of this for you.
2) It reflashes all internal partitions and firmware with stock. You flash either a RUU or a PC36IMG.zip with the contents of a RUU. This will wipe out:

a) Your custom ROM, replacing it with a stock one
b) Your custom recovery
c) Potentially different hboot and radio versions.

That last point means that if you rooted with the eng bootloader, it will be replaced with the official version in the RUU, along with radio changes. Note that once you have S-ON, if you've flashed newer radios than your hboot version, you'd either need to downgrade radios before flashing the RUU, or just flash the latest RUU. If you're on hboot 2.10, just ignore that if you didn't understand it :).

Now, if you rooted with unrevoked, and you do only the first step (flash the S-ON tool), you'll be in a situation where you still have a custom recovery and your custom, rooted ROM, but with S-ON. While you'd no longer have full root, it's obvious you had it at one point, and is kind of a pointless situation (though easy to get out of). If you're unrooting to bring the phone in for service, for example, that is not sufficient (if you're the paranoid type).
 
evomattnc said:
You would be running r2 but with no root permissions...root apps wouldn't work. Assuming you don't flash the ruu and just unroot.
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You'd still have superuser in the ROM, more than likely. You just wouldn't be able to make changes to /system anymore. You'd still be able to run root apps, though.
 
steveo41733 said:
Is that the right way to unroot, to flash the latest RUU and then flash the s-on tool?
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Other way around. If you flash the RUU, you'll be stuck with S-OFF, but no way to change it back to S-ON without reflashing a custom recovery, then flashing the stock recovery, again. Not impossible, but a waste of time. The best idea is to flash the S-ON tool, then flash a RUU via a PC36IMG.zip file. Instructions are in the Rooting for Dummies guide.
 
akazabam said:
You'd still have superuser in the ROM, more than likely. You just wouldn't be able to make changes to /system anymore. You'd still be able to run root apps, though.
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Is more than likely the nice way of saying I'm wrong or is it up in the air lol? If you retain su in the unrooted rom then agreed, not sure how that would work though...?
 
evomattnc said:
Is more than likely the nice way of saying I'm wrong or is it up in the air lol? If you retain su in the unrooted rom then agreed, not sure how that would work though...?
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Maybe I misunderstood what you said. Basically, if you just flash the S-ON tool, you're still going to have your custom, rooted ROM. Su permissions are not necessarily related to having S-OFF. You can have S-ON and superuser permissions at the same time (z4root for example). You can even flash a ROM that doesn't have superuser permissions while you have S-OFF (yeah, pointless). That's why the unrooting process has two steps - get S-ON, then flash a RUU to wipe out the custom ROM (or even a stock one that still has super user permissions) along with the custom recovery (and verify that radios and hboot are the correct versions, which will fail if you're trying to downgrade at this point and you've already flashed the S-ON tool).
 
Im just trying to get the phone back to stock unrooted status so I can sell or trade it. So from what I gather, i am going to flash the s-on tool then flash an RUU?
 
steveo41733 said:
Im just trying to get the phone back to stock unrooted status so I can sell or trade it. So from what I gather, i am going to flash the s-on tool then flash an RUU?
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Yes, but flash the RUU as a PC36IMG.zip (it's a zip file you flash from hboot with the contents of a RUU). See this thread for specific instructions. Note that you will need to flash the PC36IMG.zip that has the hboot version that matches your current one (unless you have an older one and have updated radios manually).
 
Okay, that makes it simple. This is the file you need. Flash it only after flashing the S-ON tool. Follow the instructions in the thread I linked to above.
 
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