OTA Horror Story! Be aware!

[Dunnski21]

Today i received an OTA on my rooted 2.3.3 Inc2 that downloaded without my approval, and froze my phone at the triangle-android screen. I pulled the battery, rebooted and the phone would attempt to re-install the update after about a minute. Needless to say I was screwed and ended up pulling the plug and unrooted the phone and lost the majority of my data. The guide I used to unroot the phone and bring it back to it's factory gingerbread state was found on android central. I just wanted to give everybody a quick heads-up because I couldn't stop this one, it just did it without my input.

The thing I found interesting is the fact that I had used Titanium backup to freeze "updater2.3.apk" so I was allegedly unable to receive OTAs. This tells me that either freezing apps doesn't do squat or verizon has the ability to re-install the OTA updater app on your phone should you do something with it. I don't know about you, but I am not a fan of the new OTA's that just pop up and download without warning.

I just wanted to share this, in case it happened to someone else.

 

[sjpritch25]

You need to rename /system/etc/security/otacerts.zip to something like otacerts.zip.old.

 

[Stelv]

Also one may be able to get into recovery by holding power and volume down button and selecting recovery. From recovery wipe data and cache and restore a backup instead of going through the process of unrooting. Then rename the otacerts file.

Sent from my Incredible 2

 

[Droid Firefighter]

The raid zero recovery (RZR) for the Dinc2 has an option to block OTA update programming in case anyone is interested.

 

[Dunnski21]

When I first rooted I should have installed a custom recovery, something that would have blocked the updates. The annoying thing is I actually wanted the radio that came in the update, but with root as well. Hopefully someday the phones will allow OTA updates that allow a person to maintain root.

 

[sjpritch25]

You can get the updated radio. As long as your S-OFF, its not for the faint of heart though. You can brick your device by flashing the radio.

[RADIO] HTC Incredible 2 Radios [PG32IMG.zip] (Updated: 20 Sept 2011) - xda-developers

This is the updated one
From the 4.08.605.3 RUU:

• 1.09.01.0722
  md5: 68da1874afe8f2e0e202ef96ece5218

 

[Dunnski21]

Actually when I got the OTA that shut the phone down without me checking for the update, I had already flashed the new radio. I was running 2.3.3 with the 2.3.4 radio, but then the crippling OTA came in and ruined me.