Root/Un-root Catch 22

[mchambone]

I've got myself stuck in what I think is an endless loop, and I'm hoping maybe one of you has an idea to get me out...or at worst, confirm how screwed I am.

I got my shiny new Droid in the mail today. I played around with it for a bit, then took to the internet in search of ways to void the warranty immediately - something I tend to do with most gadgets. :P

Reading a few threads here, I proceeded to root the phone and start toying with custom ROMs and whatnot. my problem is this: I thought the little mod in this thread was a great idea, until I read further into the thread and saw that this would mess up the signatures of the firmware and cause future updates to fail.

Later in the day, I tried to install the 2.1 ROM seen in this thread. It failed. Not yet putting 2 and 2 together, I backpedalled on the whole rooting idea, especially considering I'd seen elsewhere that 2.1 would (hopefully) be officially on Droid in the next couple weeks.

I followed an un-rooting guide, also found on this forum. At the final step, in which one refreshes with the plain vanilla 2.0.1 update to clear su out of the system, it failed (presumably for the renamed apps).

So we come to my problem: I'm no longer rooted, so I can't rename the apps back, however I'm also unable to root again to rename them because the signature check doesn't pass when you install the hacked update via recovery mode.

Any help/ideas/confirmation of my magnificent blunder would be appreciated.

[tktouch12]

um well if you didnt install the sprecover, you might be screwed. (for future reference, it will save you in most positions on this kind of thing). i cant say you're for sure done for, but i dont think its looking bright.?
the verizon store probably has the tools to flash a fresh factory rom on (maybe and only if they really liked you would they)

[SwordOfWar]

I've got myself stuck in what I think is an endless loop, and I'm hoping maybe one of you has an idea to get me out...or at worst, confirm how screwed I am.

I got my shiny new Droid in the mail today. I played around with it for a bit, then took to the internet in search of ways to void the warranty immediately - something I tend to do with most gadgets. :P

Reading a few threads here, I proceeded to root the phone and start toying with custom ROMs and whatnot. my problem is this: I thought the little mod in this thread was a great idea, until I read further into the thread and saw that this would mess up the signatures of the firmware and cause future updates to fail.

Later in the day, I tried to install the 2.1 ROM seen in this thread. It failed. Not yet putting 2 and 2 together, I backpedalled on the whole rooting idea, especially considering I'd seen elsewhere that 2.1 would (hopefully) be officially on Droid in the next couple weeks.

I followed an un-rooting guide, also found on this forum. At the final step, in which one refreshes with the plain vanilla 2.0.1 update to clear su out of the system, it failed (presumably for the renamed apps).

So we come to my problem: I'm no longer rooted, so I can't rename the apps back, however I'm also unable to root again to rename them because the signature check doesn't pass when you install the hacked update via recovery mode.

Any help/ideas/confirmation of my magnificent blunder would be appreciated.

You can't run the root update.zip anymore?

I'm guessing this is because the update.zip with the root contains the same software version that you already have installed, thus won't let you update.

Without custom recovery, your out of luck if it won't take the update.zip anymore.

However, you might still be in some luck as the new update that releases sometime this month will probably work (since its an official update, and its a newer version than what you have installed)...

The problem is that there will be no root method for this new version, so you will be stuck on official software unless a new root method is found for the newer software.

[mchambone]

Interesting. I think I got a bum SD card from Verizon. The thing stopped writing from my PC a few times, and formatting on the phone fixed it each time, but on a whim I pulled the card, stuck it in a card reader, and did a full format with Windows (which took two and a half hours or this thread wouldn't even have been started). Just tried the root update.zip and it ran. I don't know if maybe the phone's format utility is slapdash or the card itself is crap, but I might have saved this one.

[p0rk burn]

um well if you didnt install the sprecover, you might be screwed. (for future reference, it will save you in most positions on this kind of thing). i cant say you're for sure done for, but i dont think its looking bright.?
the verizon store probably has the tools to flash a fresh factory rom on (maybe and only if they really liked you would they)

a poster in another thread tried that and reported that the verizon stores couldn't reflash droids yet.

[Big Lou]

Well I'm glad to hear you seem to have fixed your problems. Most people often don't consider the problem lying in the SD card itself.

[Topsy]

Interesting. I think I got a bum SD card from Verizon. The thing stopped writing from my PC a few times, and formatting on the phone fixed it each time, but on a whim I pulled the card, stuck it in a card reader, and did a full format with Windows (which took two and a half hours or this thread wouldn't even have been started). Just tried the root update.zip and it ran. I don't know if maybe the phone's format utility is slapdash or the card itself is crap, but I might have saved this one.

I would suspect windows of trashing the sd card before I would suspect any linux flavor.
Possible you yanked the phone from the usb connection without unmounting it first?

[mchambone]

I would suspect windows of trashing the sd card before I would suspect any linux flavor.
Possible you yanked the phone from the usb connection without unmounting it first?

It's definitely a fault in the SD card itself. I suspected Windows had killed it the first time, but I've been forced to format it 5 times now since getting it. Most recently, about an hour ago I was installing some new stuff off the market and when I launched the AP news app, it complained of a missing SD card. Odd, because I was just taking pictures minutes before.

So I rebooted and the notification bar gave me the now-familiar Damaged SD Card error, and offers to format it once more for me. Going to contact Verizon about a replacement, considering I just got the phone yesterday. Not too big a deal if they don't, a new SD card is peanuts compared to a new phone that I thought I had killed. :P

On a side note, after fully formatting the card FAT32 with Windows it worked just fine and allowed me to run updates from it. I took that time to get sprecovery flashed, so my foot is once again in the proverbial door as far as that goes.