Newbie to rooting

[Grifter]

And I have a few questions......

I'm looking for a basic tutorial, something simple that I'll be able to understand and follow along and if I mess it up, I can start over. I'm not a coder by any means, but do have an IT background. Any suggestions?

Let's say my attempt at rooting goes bad - can I get it back to factory defaults, or am I SOL?

Even if rooting is successful, and I decide I want to turn back to default, will I be able to?

Thanks in advance for all your replies and taking the time to help out a newbie

[Knightley]

I'm in the same boat as you and would love to know the answers to your questions!

[Grifter]

I'm in the same boat as you and would love to know the answers to your questions!

I found some answers in this thread: THIS IS WHAT ROOT MEANS (stop asking)

WARNING:
In addition to voiding your warranty,
There are many risks associated with rooting your phone. The most apparent risk is bricking your device. If this happens,

Your phone is and forever will be, nothing more than, a brick.

So far, there are no software solutions for a bricked device. Your phone will be stuck at the splash loading screen indefinitely.
The only for sure way to brick your device is to corrupt both the recovery image and the secondary program loader and the actual rom itself (assuming you have a recovery image that can flash modified roms, an SPL that can fastboot, and a rom with root access)
As long as you have at least one of the three items listed, you are not the proud owner of a bricked device and can recovery your phone.
It is only when you are unable to enter recovery, fastboot, or your rom, and your device is stuck on the splash screen indefinitely, do you have a bricked device.

Also note that rooting your phone will block over the air updates that your carrier may provide you. You are pretty much consenting to opt out of OTA's; you have to update your own phone from now on.


So now I have more questions...How can I make a backup (if possible) of the original OS in order to do a full restore in case something goes horribly wrong.

As a newbie - what are the chances of my actually bricking the phone, following along with the instructions? I mean, do I have to be a complete imbecile for this to happen? Or is this like fine China, where if I'm not 100% careful, it bricks.

[The White Weapon]

Tell you what, if either of you want to be a hero in this community hold off on root for a little while. The development who made root possible needs someone to root with him so he can get a file that would allow us to do a lot more fun/cool/useful things!! If anyone without root would like to help out with this could you please pm me? I dont want to highjack this thread and i'm not sure if the mods would like this particular change of topic. Figured rather safe than sorry lol. Thanks and happy rooting.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[christim]

Tell you what, if either of you want to be a hero in this community hold off on root for a little while. The development who made root possible needs someone to root with him so he can get a file that would allow us to do a lot more fun/cool/useful things!! If anyone without root would like to help out with this could you please pm me? I dont want to highjack this thread and i'm not sure if the mods would like this particular change of topic. Figured rather safe than sorry lol. Thanks and happy rooting.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

The topic change is fine

edit: you can't do the below, I thought this was the original droid, sorry. No nandroid, restore etc
You can make your nandroid backup, revert back to stock, grab whatever file this is you are looking for, then reapply your backup again. All most likely within 15 minutes if you're used to flashing roms.

Can you divulge more info as to who "the development" is?

[christim]

As a newbie - what are the chances of my actually bricking the phone, following along with the instructions? I mean, do I have to be a complete imbecile for this to happen? Or is this like fine China, where if I'm not 100% careful, it bricks.

Oh, you don't have to be a newbie to brick a phone, rest assured of that

You pretty much would have to do something on purpose. Like unplugging the USB cable while in the middle of using RSD Lite to reflash the phone. That's a bad idea all around.

Read the threads. Plenty get stuck. I'd say the success rate of getting them unstuck is pretty high.

[The White Weapon]

I didn't think we could do nandroid backups. Wouldn't that require flashing an alternate recovery? I was also under the impression that going back to stock couldn't be done because the community doesn't have that sbf file. Also The developer is birdman. If anyone wants to check him out on twitter, or contact him directly, they can @mrweeeedbirdman

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[hookbill]

I'm in the same boat as you and would love to know the answers to your questions!

I found some answers in this thread: THIS IS WHAT ROOT MEANS (stop asking)

WARNING:
In addition to voiding your warranty,
There are many risks associated with rooting your phone. The most apparent risk is bricking your device. If this happens,

Your phone is and forever will be, nothing more than, a brick.

So far, there are no software solutions for a bricked device. Your phone will be stuck at the splash loading screen indefinitely.
The only for sure way to brick your device is to corrupt both the recovery image and the secondary program loader and the actual rom itself (assuming you have a recovery image that can flash modified roms, an SPL that can fastboot, and a rom with root access)
As long as you have at least one of the three items listed, you are not the proud owner of a bricked device and can recovery your phone.
It is only when you are unable to enter recovery, fastboot, or your rom, and your device is stuck on the splash screen indefinitely, do you have a bricked device.

Also note that rooting your phone will block over the air updates that your carrier may provide you. You are pretty much consenting to opt out of OTA's; you have to update your own phone from now on.


So now I have more questions...How can I make a backup (if possible) of the original OS in order to do a full restore in case something goes horribly wrong.

As a newbie - what are the chances of my actually bricking the phone, following along with the instructions? I mean, do I have to be a complete imbecile for this to happen? Or is this like fine China, where if I'm not 100% careful, it bricks.

I'm going to tread lightly here because I don't have an X and I don't know what's involved in hacking them. However since the post I'm quoting from comes from somebody who wrote it with the Moto Dorid in mind I should point out that: 1. To the best of my knowledge I know of 2 people who have bricked their phones out of thousands who have done it. It's pretty difficult to do and 2. If you do brick your device all you have to do is take it back, play stupid and say, I don't know what happened. I woke up and found it this way.

Do you have to be an imbecile? Probably it would take more then that considering I've rooted three times now. Unlucky would be a better terminology.

Again I'm speaking as the owner of the Droid, not a X so I don't know what happens with the X. But somebody has to have the cojones to get the ball rolling.

If it were me I'd wait and watch. I'm not that brave.

[christim]

I'm going to tread lightly here because I don't have an X and I don't know what's involved in hacking them. However since the post I'm quoting from comes from somebody who wrote it with the Moto Dorid in mind I should point out that: 1. To the best of my knowledge I know of 2 people who have bricked their phones out of thousands who have done it. It's pretty difficult to do and 2. If you do brick your device all you have to do is take it back, play stupid and say, I don't know what happened. I woke up and found it this way.

If it were me I'd wait and watch. I'm not that brave.

my bad....my previous comments had to do with the moto-droid, not the Droid X. Gonna go edit my posts.

I know you can root the phone. That really shouldn't cause problems as a bunch have done so. But root means you can alter files, for good or bad. I've seen posts where folks thought they didn't need things, considered them bloatware, and deleted them. Then found out they needed the files after all. Be knowledgeable in what you do, understand what each step does, and ask if you don't know. Then you will be less likely to be making a post with a topic like "omg I bricked my phone"

[christim]

I didn't think we could do nandroid backups. Wouldn't that require flashing an alternate recovery? I was also under the impression that going back to stock couldn't be done because the community doesn't have that sbf file. Also The developer is birdman. If anyone wants to check him out on twitter, or contact him directly, they can @mrweeeedbirdman

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

Agreed, birdman is the man Sorry, I missed the forum section so thought you might be referring to the dev group responsible for rooting the original droid, and wondered who you thought that was.

Feel free to just create a brand new thread with the topic of "droid X rooter wanted, before they root" or something to that effect.