falseprofits
Member
As a bit of a nerd, I have access to all sorts of fun stuff, web servers and the like, and I have ruined my phone many a time, and therefore know how to fix things that might happen. I suppose this same information is available scattered all over this forum, however it's not all in one place. I suppose it's handy as well because I can host some of the "harder to find" files, and consolidate them all in one place.
This is a somewhat involved process that will take some time (30 minutes to an hour depending on what you all need to do). And I guess before I start with this I better just say that there is a chance that you could brick your phone. Even if you follow these instructions to the letter, it may not work for you. I AM IN NO WAY HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU DO TO YOUR PHONE OR YOUR COMPUTER, OR WHAT HAPPENS TO ANY OF THE DATA ON YOUR PHONE. This is all hypothetical, theoretical and for demonstration purposes only. So I will say that if you do this, YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Prerequisites:
1. You MUST be running AT THE LEAST Kernel Version 2.3.340. If you you are on one of the older versions, I would suggest SBF-ing (which I'll run you how to do on Windows only at this point) to that version.
2. You MUST have the Donate version of Liberty Toolbox purchased from the market. If you don't and are skeptical, seriously people, just do it. It's well worth the money, Team Liberty is worth every dime. And seriously, what is 5$ nowadays anyway? A good cup of coffee? A beer? A pack of cigarettes? This is way more worth any of those. Except beer maybe. But do this and I'll buy you one (figuratively of course).
3. You MUST have Droid X / 2 Bootstrap. Chances are if you've ever installed a "Custom ROM" you have this already.
4. You obviously MUST be using a Droid X / Droid 2.
5. MAKE SURE you have at least 70% battery BEFORE you start the SBF process. If your phone dies during the SBF process, it will be *almost* bricked. The phone CAN'T charge in the bootloader and you'll be forced to take drastic measures IE a USB Cable Splice / Hack, a new battery, or if you've got a buddy who has an X with a charged battery.
If you meet all those prerequisites or plan on meeting them, you're in good hands. Let's start with the worst case scenario first. You're on 2.3.320 and you need to get on 2.3.340, or if you're just not sure what version your on and just want to start fresh with Liberty Gingerbread (this would be my suggestion and it would have the least amount of issues).
The first thing you should do before anything else is MAKE A NANDROID BACKUP.
1. Download RDSLite + Motorola Bootloader Drivers (I have both them hosted / zipped here.
2. Install both RDSLite and the Motorola Drivers package.
3. You'll then have to boot your phone to the bootloader. This is done by powering off your phone, and powering it back up by holding the power button, volume down button, and camera all at once. This may take a few times.
4. Connect your phone via USB cable to the computer that you've installed RDS Lite / Motorola Drivers on to. It may take a few moments for your computer to recognize your phone. I would suggest going in to "Device Manager" to make sure that your phone's drivers installed correctly. I've had it happen a few times where I'll have the little yellow triangle there. Just unplug and replug it in and it should fix it.
5. Start RDS Lite.
6. Your phone should show up there, and RDS Lite should be asking your for an SBF file to SBF to. I have the official 2.3.340 SBF (non-rooted) here. I would suggest that after unzipping that .sbf you verify it against the MD5 which is: f72e60fac2f4478ae5fd81b18eb8d01e
7. Unzip that file and add that in to the RDS Lite window (by hitting the ... button) to be flashed on your phone.
8. *WARNING* EVERYTHING on your phone will be erased when you hit start. This means EVERYTHING. If you are worried about apps / data, use titanium.
9. Click start. This will begin the process, it usually takes between 5 - 10 minutes to complete.
*BUGS with this process*
1. I have seen this happen before where RDS Lite will get stuck saying your phone is "Restarting" and will not complete, even though it looks like your phone IS restarted and on. To fix this, unplug your phone from the computer, reboot in to the bootloader (again, by powering off your phone, then turning it back on while holding the power button, volume up, and the camera button all the same time), and then plugging it back in to the computer once the bootloader is loaded. It will then show up as successful.
2. I've also had it before where it will bootloop. Don't freak out, you'll just need to boot to recovery by powering off your phone, or a battery pull, doesn't matter, and then starting your phone holding the power button and the "search" button. Then do a factory reset. Reboot after that and you should be good.
Alright. You're back to a stock 2.3.340, with no root. The first thing you're going to want to do is re-root your phone. They took Z4Root off the market a while ago - luckily for me I kept the .apk on my server. So to re-root your phone do this:
1. Go to the Market and download Astro File Manager (or another file manager that allows installing .apks). I prefer using Astro because it's quick and free.
2. Download Z4Root from here.
3. Unzip that file and move it to your SDCard somewhere (by plugging your phone to your computer, mounting your SD Card, and then copy / pasting - if you have trouble with this process, you probably shouldn't be doing all this).
4. Set applications to be installed from "non-market sources". You do this by going: Menu->Settings->Applications-> and then tick the box that says "Unkown sources".
5. Open Astro File Manager and find that Z4Root .apk that we moved over in step 3. Use Astro to install it.
6. Once it's installed and opened you can choose to do a permanent root or a temp root. It's up to your really, you're going have root anyway once we install GB, so it won't really matter.
7. Z4 should take care of the rest (like installing BusyBox / Rebooting your phone, etc).
Yay. Your phone is rooted again. I hate stock roms. I always say that right about now. So let's move on to getting Liberty Gingerbread on your phone.
1. If you haven't purchased Liberty Toolbox Donate by now, now is the time to do it, because this is where you're going to need it. So buy it.
2. You'll also need "Droid X Bootstrap" from the market.
3. Open Droid X Bootstrap, grant it SU permissions and then "Bootstrap Recovery".
3. Once you've bought Liberty Toolbox Donate and opened it and given it "Super User Permissions", go to the ROM Manager area, then to "Nightlies".
4. You'll see a few different Gingerbread ROMS in there. At this point you HAVE to do one of the "Full Installs". As I'm writing this it looks like it's on v.5, which is the latest GB Leak and there is one called FULL INSTALL. YOU HAVE TO DO THAT ONE. It's based on a whole different Android base, hence the full install to upgrade you from 2.3.340 to Gingerbread (which is like .591 now or something)
5. Once it's downloaded, it should prompt you to reboot your phone and install. Do it. Once your phone reboots to Clockwork and installs the update and reboots, you've got it. So from there you can talk to all these other guys if you have any bugs, because it runs just fine for me and I probably won't be much help with that.
I think that's pretty much it. Not too hard, just kind of involved. :reddroid:
This is a somewhat involved process that will take some time (30 minutes to an hour depending on what you all need to do). And I guess before I start with this I better just say that there is a chance that you could brick your phone. Even if you follow these instructions to the letter, it may not work for you. I AM IN NO WAY HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU DO TO YOUR PHONE OR YOUR COMPUTER, OR WHAT HAPPENS TO ANY OF THE DATA ON YOUR PHONE. This is all hypothetical, theoretical and for demonstration purposes only. So I will say that if you do this, YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Prerequisites:
1. You MUST be running AT THE LEAST Kernel Version 2.3.340. If you you are on one of the older versions, I would suggest SBF-ing (which I'll run you how to do on Windows only at this point) to that version.
2. You MUST have the Donate version of Liberty Toolbox purchased from the market. If you don't and are skeptical, seriously people, just do it. It's well worth the money, Team Liberty is worth every dime. And seriously, what is 5$ nowadays anyway? A good cup of coffee? A beer? A pack of cigarettes? This is way more worth any of those. Except beer maybe. But do this and I'll buy you one (figuratively of course).
3. You MUST have Droid X / 2 Bootstrap. Chances are if you've ever installed a "Custom ROM" you have this already.
4. You obviously MUST be using a Droid X / Droid 2.
5. MAKE SURE you have at least 70% battery BEFORE you start the SBF process. If your phone dies during the SBF process, it will be *almost* bricked. The phone CAN'T charge in the bootloader and you'll be forced to take drastic measures IE a USB Cable Splice / Hack, a new battery, or if you've got a buddy who has an X with a charged battery.
If you meet all those prerequisites or plan on meeting them, you're in good hands. Let's start with the worst case scenario first. You're on 2.3.320 and you need to get on 2.3.340, or if you're just not sure what version your on and just want to start fresh with Liberty Gingerbread (this would be my suggestion and it would have the least amount of issues).
The first thing you should do before anything else is MAKE A NANDROID BACKUP.
1. Download RDSLite + Motorola Bootloader Drivers (I have both them hosted / zipped here.
2. Install both RDSLite and the Motorola Drivers package.
3. You'll then have to boot your phone to the bootloader. This is done by powering off your phone, and powering it back up by holding the power button, volume down button, and camera all at once. This may take a few times.
4. Connect your phone via USB cable to the computer that you've installed RDS Lite / Motorola Drivers on to. It may take a few moments for your computer to recognize your phone. I would suggest going in to "Device Manager" to make sure that your phone's drivers installed correctly. I've had it happen a few times where I'll have the little yellow triangle there. Just unplug and replug it in and it should fix it.
5. Start RDS Lite.
6. Your phone should show up there, and RDS Lite should be asking your for an SBF file to SBF to. I have the official 2.3.340 SBF (non-rooted) here. I would suggest that after unzipping that .sbf you verify it against the MD5 which is: f72e60fac2f4478ae5fd81b18eb8d01e
7. Unzip that file and add that in to the RDS Lite window (by hitting the ... button) to be flashed on your phone.
8. *WARNING* EVERYTHING on your phone will be erased when you hit start. This means EVERYTHING. If you are worried about apps / data, use titanium.
9. Click start. This will begin the process, it usually takes between 5 - 10 minutes to complete.
*BUGS with this process*
1. I have seen this happen before where RDS Lite will get stuck saying your phone is "Restarting" and will not complete, even though it looks like your phone IS restarted and on. To fix this, unplug your phone from the computer, reboot in to the bootloader (again, by powering off your phone, then turning it back on while holding the power button, volume up, and the camera button all the same time), and then plugging it back in to the computer once the bootloader is loaded. It will then show up as successful.
2. I've also had it before where it will bootloop. Don't freak out, you'll just need to boot to recovery by powering off your phone, or a battery pull, doesn't matter, and then starting your phone holding the power button and the "search" button. Then do a factory reset. Reboot after that and you should be good.
Alright. You're back to a stock 2.3.340, with no root. The first thing you're going to want to do is re-root your phone. They took Z4Root off the market a while ago - luckily for me I kept the .apk on my server. So to re-root your phone do this:
1. Go to the Market and download Astro File Manager (or another file manager that allows installing .apks). I prefer using Astro because it's quick and free.
2. Download Z4Root from here.
3. Unzip that file and move it to your SDCard somewhere (by plugging your phone to your computer, mounting your SD Card, and then copy / pasting - if you have trouble with this process, you probably shouldn't be doing all this).
4. Set applications to be installed from "non-market sources". You do this by going: Menu->Settings->Applications-> and then tick the box that says "Unkown sources".
5. Open Astro File Manager and find that Z4Root .apk that we moved over in step 3. Use Astro to install it.
6. Once it's installed and opened you can choose to do a permanent root or a temp root. It's up to your really, you're going have root anyway once we install GB, so it won't really matter.
7. Z4 should take care of the rest (like installing BusyBox / Rebooting your phone, etc).
Yay. Your phone is rooted again. I hate stock roms. I always say that right about now. So let's move on to getting Liberty Gingerbread on your phone.
1. If you haven't purchased Liberty Toolbox Donate by now, now is the time to do it, because this is where you're going to need it. So buy it.
2. You'll also need "Droid X Bootstrap" from the market.
3. Open Droid X Bootstrap, grant it SU permissions and then "Bootstrap Recovery".
3. Once you've bought Liberty Toolbox Donate and opened it and given it "Super User Permissions", go to the ROM Manager area, then to "Nightlies".
4. You'll see a few different Gingerbread ROMS in there. At this point you HAVE to do one of the "Full Installs". As I'm writing this it looks like it's on v.5, which is the latest GB Leak and there is one called FULL INSTALL. YOU HAVE TO DO THAT ONE. It's based on a whole different Android base, hence the full install to upgrade you from 2.3.340 to Gingerbread (which is like .591 now or something)
5. Once it's downloaded, it should prompt you to reboot your phone and install. Do it. Once your phone reboots to Clockwork and installs the update and reboots, you've got it. So from there you can talk to all these other guys if you have any bugs, because it runs just fine for me and I probably won't be much help with that.
I think that's pretty much it. Not too hard, just kind of involved. :reddroid: