Root A Learning Experience :)Care to share yours?

[droidpcguru]

Here goes.. please bear with me on this extremely long post It is my hope that this will not only entertain, but help others. Plus hopefully some of you may share your own experiences.

I was one of those who browsed around, seeing what all the root hype was about, but never tried it until SMUpdater came along. I downloaded it, ran it, and started to enjoy the rooting experience the easy way.

Once rooted and on SM 2.0.2, I started to experiment with terminal emulators(Connectbot in particular), and changed my boot animation, tried the Milestone EQ, got rid of OTAcerts(though I didn't need to), and even changed my system font. I also messed with Metamorph, and put in the live wallpapers atop 2.0.5. I sourced some family help to get things like SetCPU and DxTop(I have no credit cards). I had 2.0.5 running quite well, with a hybrid blue/glass theme from multiple "morphs", DxTop working perfectly with Live wallpapers, OC'ed to 1.2G..running quite well and fancy. I figured I had it made...all without using ADB.

Well, as luck would have it, I saw all the hype about benchmarks and JIT in the Beast roms, so I decided to give beast 7.9 a try. I installed it, and tried to set things back up..no root. This of couse is not a jab at Pete, as he does great work. To make things worse I forgot to Nandroid my "happy" setup.

I figured I would go back to 2.0.6 . Beast 1.0 was out, but I didn't want to lose the 1.2G kernel with t3hSteve's fixes. So..I started thinking. I could go back to 2.0.5 before installing live wallpapers, but there was a ton of work to be done anyhow, so I decided it was time to learn, and take the advice of some of the experts in this forum. I did a simple Astro backup of my apps, went into recovery, and restored my first Nandroid Backup. I even did a factory restore after that.. BONE stock 2.0.1..

At that time, DMupdater was not out yet, so I had no choice but to do it the old-fashioned way. I followed the guides in CRP's sticky, rooted, installed the SDK and drivers, pushed in busybox and SPrecovery using ADB, and got my Droid all ready to go. I made a Nandroid backup of my "new" rooted 2.0.1, something that may come in handy sometime in the future.

I then downloaded DM 2.0.6(still before DMupdater), and flashed it in. From there , I brought back my apps with ASTRO, got my basic apps and setings back where I like them, and went on with the fun stuff. I replaced my bootanimation, flashed the live wallpapers back in, and changed my system font once more. Then I set up DxTop to my liking, and moved on to Metamorph. I use two themes..first I.C.E. by tdawg, then Glass by AdamZ. This gives me the glass look I like, with lots of blue still themed in from I.C.E. DxTop is setup with the Aero Theme, and Aero icon pack.

I'm quite happy with the results I have not had a single force close, even at 1.2G with tons of tasks running. My temps aren't bad(45C max on the battery). Benchmarks are holding steady in the low to mid 250's at 1.2G even with the live wallpapers running. Everything is smooth sailing and look awesome. I run SetCPU at 1G max, 250 min, ondemand. I use 1.2G for more advanced tasks like video recording, and camera/photo editing. There is definitely something to be said about starting from scratch. Plus I have a newfound knowledge on how to "fix" things should they go wrong in the future. It was a long day, but it was definitely worth it.

Of course most everyone in these forums, and on others, deserves a big Thank You from me, as this is where I learned to do all this. And also a huge Thank You to the devs out there who have made this all possible.

Here is a screenshot of my homescreen and a link to more of the near-final-for-now product(still some cleaning up to do). The Nexus background shot shows a "sparkle" where I touched the screen showing interactions work. Some of the rest show all the nice glass and blue-themed items, and the look of the system font. The screenshots were taken through the PC, and not color corrected, but still look quite nice. Enjoy!

Main Center Homescreen

And here are the rest:
Droid Screenshots pictures by droidpcguy - Photobucket

EDIT: I made a new Battery Icon It is a modified version of 3Dbattery by Manigma77. I changed it from red to blue to match my theme setup. The icon of course changes with the battery status. It's a deeper blue, just in case anyone else wants it Here it is:

I also added a lockscreen screenshot to my album, which is where this Notification bar is cropped from

Thanks for reading!

 

[rox44]

Nice setup!

 

[Captain R]

Nice job keep up the good work!

 

[droidpcguru]

Thanks for the kind words

I edited the first post to include my new 3D Droid battery icon If anyone is interested in it just let me know. It is a Metamorph file, and easy to apply.

 

[johnlgalt]

Nice looking setup you got there. I finally started bouncing around ROMs after BB 0.7.9 / BB 1.0 did nto play niely with me and ended up (after 4 trials) with AdamZ's Smoked Glass 4.5. I really like that smoked glass effect, and the blue suits me perfectly, *and* it has Swype integrated. I finally get to play around with that wonderful piece of software....

Oh, and Launcher 2.

My problem with making a full post like this, though, is that I cannot remember all that I have done / tried - and I have only been at it for a month... lol

 

[droidpcguru]

Nice looking setup you got there. I finally started bouncing around ROMs after BB 0.7.9 / BB 1.0 did nto play niely with me and ended up (after 4 trials) with AdamZ's Smoked Glass 4.5. I really like that smoked glass effect, and the blue suits me perfectly, *and* it has Swype integrated. I finally get to play around with that wonderful piece of software....

Oh, and Launcher 2.

My problem with making a full post like this, though, is that I cannot remember all that I have done / tried - and I have only been at it for a month... lol

Send a pm and I will send you the Battery icon if you'd like. I'm thinking of posting it here, just not sure if I should since I can't completely taking credit for it..

 

[Kirch21]

Nice post, can i ask where you got the icons at! Look great is that a metamorph?

 

[droidpcguru]

The icons are a combination of using the DxTop Aero theme, and the "Aero Icon Pack", both free on the market. The icon pack doesn't have a lot of icons, but there were enoough for me to do what I needed.

The rest of the theme is 'Morphed, yes. I first applied the complete I.C.E. theme, then the complete Glass theme. The first gave the blue look, the latter the transparent look while still leaving most of the blue(along with the DxTop theme and Icons of course for the transparent look). For the font, I changed the system font to the "Sonystyle" font. Lastly I modified the 3Dbattery icon to blue, and "morphed" that in.

As the first post states, I have the blue battery metamorph file for anyone who'd like it, just not sure if I can attach it in this forum.

 

[SoDroid]

Nice post DroidPCGuru, I am on the same course as you in terms of learning all I can about rooting. My biggest deterrent has simply been fear. I have not messed anything up at any point and am proficient on windows based OSs. But just the thought of bricking my new, awesome phone scares the crap out of me.

Most of this stuff is not that complicated as long as you have good advice to follow, which this forum is FULL of, thank you everyone!

Posts like this compel me to push my understanding of the Droid and not 'take the easy road' with DMupdater (although it is great!). Thanks for posting your experience DroidPCGuru, I think I have some experimenting to do this week!

 

[droidpcguru]

Just take your time, be careful, and learn as much as you can in the process Once you have your phone customized the way you want it, you'll enjoy it all the more. Plus, if you ever run into someone else with a Droid and they see it, they will be blown away.

 

[YankeeDudeL]

Biggest thing I learned is that nandroid backups are not only prudent, but essential.

 

[johnlgalt]

As with anything digital - Backup, backup, BACKUP!

 

[droidpcguru]

Yup, I learned that the hard way..the one time I forgot to do it was when I lost it all. I was too spoiled by installing .tgz ROMS, which automatically do a backup.

I've learned my lesson, though. I did some final tweakking today, and got my setup super close to where I want it. So, about 2 hours ago, I did a FULL advanced Nandroid backup, so I will always have an awesome setup to fall back on. I also learned that while my Droid was in a reboot loop(don't know if I mentioned that in the first post) I lost half of my pictures on my SD card. My PC data recovery program fixed that, though. Now I have a cleaned-up SD card with only what I want/need on it and plenty of free space

 

[ericks17]

Yup, I learned that the hard way..the one time I forgot to do it was when I lost it all. I was too spoiled by installing .tgz ROMS, which automatically do a backup.

I've learned my lesson, though. I did some final tweakking today, and got my setup super close to where I want it. So, about 2 hours ago, I did a FULL advanced Nandroid backup, so I will always have an awesome setup to fall back on. I also learned that while my Droid was in a reboot loop(don't know if I mentioned that in the first post) I lost half of my pictures on my SD card. My PC data recovery program fixed that, though. Now I have a cleaned-up SD card with only what I want/need on it and plenty of free space

May I ask which data recovery program you used, and where/how to get it. I screwed up one of me SD cards and was never able to fix it get anything off it.

 

[droidpcguru]

May I ask which data recovery program you used, and where/how to get it. I screwed up one of me SD cards and was never able to fix it get anything off it.

EASEUS Hard Drive Data Recovery Software. Disk Recovery & Data Recovery Tools to recover deleted files and formatted or corrupt drives.

I have the professional version. I actually bought it through another local PC tech. It's not cheap, but since I do a LOT of work on PCs for people, it's a must-have.

 

[ericks17]

Haha you're right not cheap. Thanks for the link.

 

[droidpcguru]

Yup.. I searched around for a decent free one, but none suited my needs as well as this one. I believe if you Google "Data Recovery" you may find one with a 30-day trial.. just make sure it does SD cards and has the ability to "deep-scan" or pull "raw" files.