Ongoing ROM Manager Issue

Vulcan1600

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This is something that has happened for quite a while now, in fact ever since I threw $5 on the paid ROM Manager.

I decided to get Sapphire 1.0 using RM a couple of days ago. I flashed CW and did a backup of my current ROM in case something happened, and installed the Sapphire and a theme. When I went to Flash Alternate Recovery, I went back into Reboot into Recovery....I didn't have CW or SPRecovery. Just a boot loop, then the phone eventually just turned on and was back to using my phone. I tried to flash alternate recovery 4x and same result. Finally, I flashed CW, power cycled the phone, came back to ROM Manager, flashed Alternate Recovery again 2x, power cycled the phone, then went into recovery mode and finally had SPRecovery.

Today I decided to try a new theme on Sapphire, and the exact same thing happened. Thankfully I knew how to resolve the issue. I'm just amazed that for a premium program that this ongoing issue with flashing back and forth isn't fixed. Has anyone else had this problem?
 

richhowe

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Happens to me too. Seems to work fine until an update of ROM Manger is released and then recovery breaks again. The good news is that I figured out how to tell when re-flashing will finally work. When you can flash back and forth relativley quickly, you have a good recovery. If it takes a while to flash back and forth then you'll just boot back into your ROM. Once it flashes back and forth quickly between recoveries, you know you've re-flashed enough times and you should be able to boot into recovery.
 

Corinacakes

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This is something that has happened for quite a while now, in fact ever since I threw $5 on the paid ROM Manager.

I decided to get Sapphire 1.0 using RM a couple of days ago. I flashed CW and did a backup of my current ROM in case something happened, and installed the Sapphire and a theme. When I went to Flash Alternate Recovery, I went back into Reboot into Recovery....I didn't have CW or SPRecovery. Just a boot loop, then the phone eventually just turned on and was back to using my phone. I tried to flash alternate recovery 4x and same result. Finally, I flashed CW, power cycled the phone, came back to ROM Manager, flashed Alternate Recovery again 2x, power cycled the phone, then went into recovery mode and finally had SPRecovery.

Today I decided to try a new theme on Sapphire, and the exact same thing happened. Thankfully I knew how to resolve the issue. I'm just amazed that for a premium program that this ongoing issue with flashing back and forth isn't fixed. Has anyone else had this problem?

:shocked: :shocked: :shocked: Rom Manager have problems? Pleaseeeeeee!!! :rofl3:
 

tcrews

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Here's the trick. If it takes longer than 2-3 seconds to flash ClockworkMod Recovery it didn't take. Granted the first time will take a while (while it downloads clockworkmod recovery) but after the first time I always flash again immediately to see if it is 2-3 seconds or about 10 seconds to get a "success" popup. If it's longer than 2-3 seconds it did not take. Try "Clear Download Cache" from it's menus and initiate a re-download of ClockworkMod Recovery. If I try a few times and it never takes I then flash the alternate recovery once and go back and flash clockworkmod recovery again.

I have never had a problem with ClockworkMod Recovery. I've flashed ROMs 3-4 times a week (while building/testing my own compiles) and using others and have never had an issue. I can tell when it's going to work and when it's not (longer time before "success" popup ) and will get it so that when I click 'Flash ClockworkMod Recovery" and then click "Motorola Droid (CDMA)" it returns a "Successfully flashed ClockworkMod recovery" popup in 2-3 seconds max.
 

Tallica

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Your taking a risk with Rom Manager everytime, It has serious Froyo issues.

No matter where you are in the process or what you are running you can do this once and not worry about it again:

Use sbf to flash SPRecovery onto your phone:

You will need to have RSD Lite installed to flash the SPRecovery sbf file for ESE81 (official 2.1 Android for Motorola Droid.)


Download the following file:
SPRecovery for ESE81 sbf file (browse to sbf folder)
  1. Connect your phone to the PC via USB and turn it off then while your phone is booting hold up on the DPAD.
  2. Run RSD Lite 4.6 as Administrator (For all you Vista and 7 folks out there. If you are using XP you may not need to run as Administrator)
  3. If your phone is not displayed in the "model" column you may need to do the following:
    1. Select the "config" option from the upper left corner of the tool
    2. Select DeviceId Options
    3. Select one of the two options available. By default neither are chosen, and my phone shows up fine with neither one selected.
  4. Click the [...] next to the filename box and browse to where you saved the .sbf file you want to use and double click the .sbf file.
  5. Hit start and below it should give you completion progress.
  6. Your phone will reboot and you will be on a stock 2.1 phone with SPRecovery installed.
credit to ikithme and video at droid-life.com

You now have the replacement boot-recovery app SPRecovery installed. You can use this tool to perform backups, restore those backups, apply update.zip updates, kernels, and flash full replacement roms.

EDIT 8-28-2010 by dmacleo. link corrected.
 
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hookbill

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I've never used ROM Manager, all I can say is from my experience on these Forums it sure seems to have a lot of issues.

Now I'm the first one to step up and say that only people with issues post in the Forums, you rarely see those who are satisfied come in and say, "Gee, what a great product." But the amount of issues I see here is extensive.
 

MotoCache1

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This is why I stick with SPRecovery. No odd behavior - it just works. There are some update.zip file out there that don't work with SPRecovery (maybe the author was a Clockwork user so didn't test/care if it worked with SPR) but now that I know how to repackage them correctly to work with everything I have no incentive to switch.

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk
 
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Vulcan1600

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I use SPRecovery almost exclusively, but decided that for Sapphire 1.0 that I'd save some time (?) and flash ROM Manager CW to install it. I mean, I did pay $5 for this program which I quickly realized was not worth the sacrifice of two beers I would have paid at Happy Hour, so figured I might as well use it for the ROM. When I do updates in the Market, there's always updates for ROM Manager, and people complain but for some reason I figured some of those updates were to fix a major flaw with CW. Apparently not and it is a little discouraging. I also posted in here thinking the authors of ROM Manager might read this and acknowledge and give hope that the issue is being addressed.
 

Tallica

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I use SPRecovery almost exclusively, but decided that for Sapphire 1.0 that I'd save some time (?) and flash ROM Manager CW to install it. I mean, I did pay $5 for this program which I quickly realized was not worth the sacrifice of two beers I would have paid at Happy Hour, so figured I might as well use it for the ROM. When I do updates in the Market, there's always updates for ROM Manager, and people complain but for some reason I figured some of those updates were to fix a major flaw with CW. Apparently not and it is a little discouraging. I also posted in here thinking the authors of ROM Manager might read this and acknowledge and give hope that the issue is being addressed.

I don't believe CW has a problem, it's fine as a standalone. It's RM with the issues.
 
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Vulcan1600

Vulcan1600

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I use SPRecovery almost exclusively, but decided that for Sapphire 1.0 that I'd save some time (?) and flash ROM Manager CW to install it. I mean, I did pay $5 for this program which I quickly realized was not worth the sacrifice of two beers I would have paid at Happy Hour, so figured I might as well use it for the ROM. When I do updates in the Market, there's always updates for ROM Manager, and people complain but for some reason I figured some of those updates were to fix a major flaw with CW. Apparently not and it is a little discouraging. I also posted in here thinking the authors of ROM Manager might read this and acknowledge and give hope that the issue is being addressed.

I don't believe CW has a problem, it's fine as a standalone. It's RM with the issues.
I agree, it is RM and not CW itself with the issues. I meant to convey that in my previous posts.
 

luv2golf

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I am rooted and running sapphire 1.0 just going along fat, dumb and happy. I have restored several times using CW with no problems. All of a sudden, I start getting "MD5 sum" errors on my restores. My nandroid backups are all gone and when I flash recoveries I go to the non-rooted SPRecovery. I flashed an earlier version of CW, flashed b/t CW and SPR multiple times w/2-3 sec for a success popup. I know RM has issues but it is convenient flashing ROMs when you don't have access to a computer while on trips. Any ideas?
 

CellZealot

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I was the firs one to report this bug directly to Koush on IRC almost 3 months ago when we got our hands on the first FRE Froyo/Eclair hybrid builds. I was basically ignored for a long time because very few people were running Froyo builds until we started releasing them. "Buggy unreleased versions...blah, blah..." until froyo hit for some of the other phones that CM supports.
Koush claims that it is a bug in the flash_image binary itself that conflicts with Froyo
builds, and that it can happen even when flashing recovery manually in a terminal or adb shell from a PC.
Personally I have never had it happen except when using ROM manager and have discussed it many times on IRC with PDR447 and Koush.
It is serious problem that occurs frequently if you change ROMs often.

I dont know what the solution is but I have taken to not using ROM manager at all and just manually loading ROMs and using a terminal if I need to switch between CWM recovery and SP recovery for any reason.
 

MotoCache1

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I know RM has issues but it is convenient flashing ROMs when you don't have access to a computer while on trips. Any ideas?
Keep your ROMs on your SD card in a folder called ROMs. If you need to put one in, copy it to the root and rename it update.zip and boot recovery. A little longer, but temporarily bricking your phone while you're on a trip and don't have access to a computer will suck too.
 

solar

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Your taking a risk with Rom Manager everytime, It has serious Froyo issues.

No matter where you are in the process or what you are running you can do this once and not worry about it again:

Use sbf to flash SPRecovery onto your phone:

You will need to have RSD Lite installed to flash the SPRecovery sbf file for ESE81 (official 2.1 Android for Motorola Droid.)


Download the following file:
  1. Connect your phone to the PC via USB and turn it off then while your phone is booting hold up on the DPAD.
  2. Run RSD Lite 4.6 as Administrator (For all you Vista and 7 folks out there. If you are using XP you may not need to run as Administrator)
  3. If your phone is not displayed in the "model" column you may need to do the following:
    1. Select the "config" option from the upper left corner of the tool
    2. Select DeviceId Options
    3. Select one of the two options available. By default neither are chosen, and my phone shows up fine with neither one selected.
  4. Click the [...] next to the filename box and browse to where you saved the .sbf file you want to use and double click the .sbf file.
  5. Hit start and below it should give you completion progress.
  6. Your phone will reboot and you will be on a stock 2.1 phone with SPRecovery installed.
credit to ikithme and video at droid-life.com

You now have the replacement boot-recovery app SPRecovery installed. You can use this tool to perform backups, restore those backups, apply update.zip updates, kernels, and flash full replacement roms.

Hi Tallica,
If I understand this correctly, flashing using this .sbf, I will have SPrecovery, but with a 2.1 ROM unstalled, right?

I'm currently running 2.2 (forced update) and would like to install SPrecovery. is stepping back to 2.1, then reinstaling the 2.2 update the only way to get SPrecovery? or is there another .sbf file?

I already have RSDlite installed with the proper drivers. I'm just looking to install SPrecovery so I an start to fiddle around with new kernals and maybe custom roms. I've been reading a lot of threads, but i'm still trying to put it all together. thanks.
 
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