Trouble Installing ROMS and Themes

[kdub5985]

I rooted my Motorola Droid using z4root as I have a Mac and could not use the other methods. I installed the 2.2.1 ROM when it was made available. I then installed ROM Manager, which installed Clockwork MOD and nandroid. I attempted to install the Sapphire ROM so I rebooted into recovery mode which opened the clockwork mod recover. I backed up my phone using nandroid, wiped my cache and data, and tried to install the sapphire zip which i renamed to update.zip. My phone rebooted to the android setup screen and it did not install the rom. So i've searched and searched and watched countless youtube videos. I tried to completely go back to stock and was unable to apply any .zip files to change anything. So i've come here for help!! Please let me know what I'm doing wrong!

Thanks!

[furbearingmammal]

Few problems there. Quite a few unneeded steps, etc.

I can help, however. How are you at following instructions?

[kdub5985]

Well pretty good I thought, but I must have missed or misunderstood a few things it sounds like!

[furbearingmammal]

Missed something, yes. Reboot your phone and come tell me what version you have for your bootloader. But I'll save us some time and predict you have 2C 7C.

As such, we'll have to do a couple little tricky things to get ClockworkMod or (my preference) SPRecovery onto your phone. This will work with both, and CWM might work a little easier for you (one less step, but not a big one), but ROM Manager and CWM recovery don't always play the nicest.

[kdub5985]

When I hold x and the powerbutton ClockworkMod Recovery v2.5.0.1 comes up. This is what i used to back up and restore my phone. And also what i tried to use to install my .zips. Not sure what 2C 7C is.

[furbearingmammal]

Okay, this is the only chiding you're going to get, so bear with me. You rooted your phone without knowing how to get into or even what the bootloader is? That's not a good sign, but we'll press forward nonetheless. When you get a chance, do a little more reading so you know what you're getting into.

Power the phone down. Press the d-pad towards the screen and hold it. Now power the phone up while holding the d-pad. You should get a black screen with some white text; this is the bootloader. Tell me what version you have. If it's not 2C 7C then we're having problems beyond what I'm expecting and we'll have other things to do instead of this relatively simple fix.

[kdub5985]

Sorry yeah I guess the only thing I had ever gotten into when installing things in the past was the recovery. Yeah bootloader does say 2C.7C.

[furbearingmammal]

Okay. The fix is relatively simple. You just need to flash recovery again, do a battery pull, boot into recovery, and install an update.zip that fixes recovery in memory rather than letting the bootloader replace it. Think you can handle that?

[kdub5985]

Ha, yeah I think so. Where do i find this magic update.zip? Will I need to wipe data & cache? Will this unroot me? What do I need to do different this time to ensure I don't run into this issue?

Thanks for all your help on this!! I promise to read up on what I'm getting myself into. It seemed pretty straightforward when I was reading instructions.

[furbearingmammal]

Oh, the process of rooting is quite simple. What it does isn't. Not only that, but flashing ROMs and stuff is more advanced.

This update.zip will not only not unroot you, it's the same one as was used before z4root to root D1's after the FRG22D update hit. No wipes are needed. Just flash this and then you can flash whatever ROM you want. I'll dig up the instructions for you here in just a minute. These are rough because I haven't had the time (or drive) to really polish them, but they'll work.