Root Flashing First ROM

[chevboy_0]

So before you say "oh no heres another new guy that doesn't know what hes doing" hear me out.

For the past 2 hours I have been searching this site and reading about Rooting and Flashing new ROM's etc. and I'm still having trouble. I downloaded Cyanogen 6.0.0 and when the phone re booted it got stuck at the Cyanogen boot animation screen, and when I pulled the Battery and rebooted in to recovery I was able to restore everything and now the phone works again.

So first off, how long should it take after downloading a new ROM to boot back up with the new ROM installed? And how can I save the ROM in to the SD card?

And when I go to DL Cyanogen it asks which home application I should use and gives me ADWlauncher and Launcher 2 as options.

Thanks again guys

 

[gwlaw99]

Remember when flashing any new ROM to first do a Nandroid backup with ROM Manager (free download) and flash Clockwork Recovery. If something goes wrong you can just go back into Recovery and install the Nandroid backup like you would a ROM.

I then boot into recovery (also through ROM Manager) and do a factory reset three times and wipe cache partition three times. This is very important to do unless it is a minor upgrade from one version of the same ROM to another.

Then install the ROM and reboot. Then you can install a custom Kernal and reboot.

ADW is better than Launcher2, but I prefer Launcher Pro which you can get from the app market.

I don't really like stock Cyanogen. I either use Ultimate Droid or Bugless Beast, but there are other good mods as well like Liquid Frozen Yogurt.

 

[obstar85]

I am going to throw my random two cents into the ring on this one. My friend was having the same issue trying to load pretty much any Rom where it would boot to the animation then go into a boot loop for a while and after a battery pull it would reload stock nice and easy but he couldnt get past the boot animation. After playing with it for a while it dawned that since pretty much all the Roms were loading a new kernal when we installed them so we loaded one waited till it went to a boot loop pulled the battery went into recovery and loaded a kernal we knew worked on his phone and it loaded up fine.

 

[chevboy_0]

what kernal did you end up loading?

and how would I go about picking a kernal that will work with my phone?

 

[chevboy_0]

UPDATE: So I downloaded Liquid Frozen Yogurt 1.6 and after I chose Wipe Data she fired right up and so far is running fine(In the 5 minutes that its been loaded)

I chose the 1200 pack for the kernal(I think thats correct)

 

[chevboy_0]

I now have Quadrant, SetCPu, Terminal Emulator, and Titanium on my Droid.

Are there any other applications/settings that I should look for in order to maximize my Root experience?

Also for the Themes that I can DL for LFY do I just need to drag them from my Desktop on to the SD card? Or is there a specific place that I need to put it?

Thank you for bearing with me as I attempt to figure this stuff out

 

[coled91]

I now have Quadrant, SetCPu, Terminal Emulator, and Titanium on my Droid.

Are there any other applications/settings that I should look for in order to maximize my Root experience?

Also for the Themes that I can DL for LFY do I just need to drag them from my Desktop on to the SD card? Or is there a specific place that I need to put it?

Thank you for bearing with me as I attempt to figure this stuff out

Make sure you get wireless tether and a screenshot app. I prefer DroCap2

 

[YankeeDudeL]

I now have Quadrant, SetCPu, Terminal Emulator, and Titanium on my Droid.

Are there any other applications/settings that I should look for in order to maximize my Root experience?

Also for the Themes that I can DL for LFY do I just need to drag them from my Desktop on to the SD card? Or is there a specific place that I need to put it?

Thank you for bearing with me as I attempt to figure this stuff out

You can find out about a lot of very handy root apps here in this thread: http://androidforums.com/droid-all-things-root/61149-favorite-root-applcations.html

Also to answer your initial question about how long should a ROM take to load up fully, most ROMs take only a couple mins. Most ROMs have reviews at the bottom of the original post and the initial setup is generally the first thing listed. I hope that helps get you started.