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Step-by-step Rooting & Flashing guide for Optimus S.

Hey Razz, I need to bend your ear a little. The last few days when I tried to press the home key, volume down, and the power button simultaneously to go to the xionia options it flashes the "LG" logo then simple goes blank and does nothing. Then when the phone is on and I hold the power button to bring up the list of options and I got to "Reboot" it has reboot, recovery, and bootloader. It reboots fine but it does nothing when you hit recovery or bootloader. I thought maybe one of those options would bring me my menu to load different ROMs etc.

Sorry to bug you again with all these questions but if you have any advice or what to do I would really appreciate it. Thanks again for your help
 
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My LG Is Poop: I'm not sure what 's going on with your phone. I think you're on Kraven's CM7 so you might want to ask over on that forum. It sounds like the Xonia recovery got corrupted or renamed or something. I'm on Reborn ROM. I don't have a "bootloader" option. And I'm always able to get to the Xonia recovery. Did you try pulling the battery, pushing the power button, and then reinstalling the battery?

I guess in the worst case you could do a Titanium backup (just in case) and try to reinstall Xonia with optiauto-sfx.exe. Not sure if that would work.
 
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Yea I tried to reinstall all that, I even tried to unroot and get back to factory and nothing took at all. The only thing Ive noticed is my SD card is completely clean nothing on it at all. After you turn it on all that comes up is force close menus for about every app that was ever installed on the phone. Then the live wallpaper just flickers off and on and at the bottom of the screen it says "empty". Once I plugged the USB in it went into a safe mode. The only thing I can think of is about a week ago I was on this forum looking for good apps for this phone and one of them said rom mananger. And ever since then the phone has been acting weird since I installed it, shutting off, rebooting, no recovery, and now all this. So I dont know if it could all be a result to that or not.
 
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I tried rooting my Optimus S; everything was going great, (i.e. I got "It's a GG man!" and my phone rebooted) that's until I went to install Titanium Backup. I opened it and gave it root access, where it then flashed something like this, "I can't get root access, check and see if your phone is rooted."--or something similar. Anyhow, it said my phone wasn't rooted. I attempted to root my phone two more times with no avail.

My Optimus is barely a month old if that makes any difference? Any ideas???
 
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Look in your App drawer for Superuser app. If it's there then do this:
Download ES File Explorer. Open it up and go go to menu/settings/Home Directory. Select it and erase /sdcard/, everything except the last /. This will take you to your home directory where you can navigate easier. Check the Up to Root box.

Go down to Root Explorer and check the box.

Go to View/select Details.

Go to File Settings/select "Show Hidden Files


Select Clean History and Cache on exit.

Go back to the main screen.
Go to /system/bin/su (everything will be in alpha-numeric order) Let me know what the permissions of su are (it should be rwxr-xr-x or rwsr-sr-x). If all this looks good then you just need to install BusyBox.

Go to Google Play and download a BusyBox installer. You want to install it to the /system/xbin (usually the /system/bin location will give you a insufficient space message).

Now download a terminal emulator and type in:
su if you get a # your properly rooted.

If you are not rooted and still need some help just pm me.
 
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Thanks razz and Andy. Talking to sammyz on here about it. Would be nice to get it working to sell it. Found out I was eligible for an upgrade this weekend and got the galaxy s2! I def recommend it, its a great phone. If you guys are looking for any parts let me know I have a bunch of new stuff for the optimus that isnt going to get used. Thanks again for all the help!
 
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I tried rooting my Optimus S; everything was going great, (i.e. I got "It's a GG man!" and my phone rebooted) that's until I went to install Titanium Backup. I opened it and gave it root access, where it then flashed something like this, "I can't get root access, check and see if your phone is rooted."--or something similar. Anyhow, it said my phone wasn't rooted. I attempted to root my phone two more times with no avail.
My Optimus is barely a month old if that makes any difference? Any ideas???
Which baseband do you have? If you have baseband ZVJ, look at the section above titled, "What if I have ZVJ?"

If your baseband is ZVD or ZVH, are you able to boot into the Xonia Custom Recovery (by pressing the Home, Volume-Down, and then power buttons)?
 
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A nandroid backup is a backup that is made of your currently installed system/ROM from the recovery ( it is a total and complete backup of you ROM). Go to the "backup and restore" option and select "backup" when it is done you will have a nandroid backup stored in the clockworkmod folder on the sdcard.

If you ever mess up, or install a ROM you don't like: Wipe and format everything necessary for a fresh ROM install, then go to the restore option. When it is done your backed up ROM/system will be installed. Reboot in to system. Everything will look exactly as it did when you made the backup.

Note: If you update a lot of apps or make majors changes to your ROM then make a nandroid of that and delete the old one. They will have a date/time stamp on them in the clockworkmod folder.
 
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I'm confused on how to do the nandroid backup,i got the ZVJ baseband and i just need to know more specifically on how to do and where to get the nandroid backup.
Step #5 in my original post explains how to do a Nandroid backup. You need to have the Xonia custom recovery (or a similar custom recovery) installed in order to do a Nandroid backup.
 
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You need to flash the ZVD update.zip twice-- once for the baseband and once for the OS. If you've done that, your baseband should be ZVD, your SW version should be ZVD, and your Android version should be (I think) 2.2.2.

You need to root the phone and install a custom recovery in order to flash the Reborn ROM. Please follow the step-by-step instructions in the main part of the guide above, and be sure not to skip any steps. If optiauto-sfx.exe doesn't work the first time, try it a few times. What error message does it give?

Followed everything down to a T. I got to the step where you flash zvd update.zip the first time. and then reboot. Its still rebooting. whats the longest it should take? Its been over a half hour now at the time of post. I'll update if its fixed before i get a reply. Any Advice?
 
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Followed everything down to a T. I got to the step where you flash zvd update.zip the first time. and then reboot. Its still rebooting. whats the longest it should take? Its been over a half hour now at the time of post. I'll update if its fixed before i get a reply. Any Advice?
I assume that you were following the instructions in the Appendix for reverting to stock ZVD, right?

The phone should reboot within 5 minutes-- probably within 3. If not, try pulling the battery, holding the power button, reinstalling the battery, and then rebooting. If the same problem occurs, you can try doing a factory data wipe and cache wipe, and then trying again but you'lll lose your apps, contacts, etc. (But you won't lose the stuff on your SD card, like music, photos, videos, etc.)
 
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How to make your phone a stock ZVD (Android v2.2 "Froyo") phone:
A) Read the introductory part of the main guide (above) and then make sure that you have about 100MB of free space on your SD card.
B) Instead of downloading a custom ROM in step 4 (above), you'll download Sprint's stock ZVD ROM called "update.zip" from this link on Sprint's website, and save it to your PC.
C) Copy that ZVD "update.zip" onto the root directory (i.e. the highest level) of your SD card.
D) Turn off the phone.
E) Boot into recovery mode

Hi Razz. Still thinking about it. I assume one has to connect to the PC after step B to make step C possible. Then, after step C, should the USB be disconnected before step D?
 
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I assume one has to connect to the PC after step B to make step C possible.
Yes, I think it's easiest to connect your phone to your PC via USB, turn on USB storage, and then transfer the update.zip file from your PC to your phone via USB. But alternatively, you could put your phone's SD card into the PC's card reader slot, transfer the file to your SD card and then put the card back into the phone.

Then, after step C, should the USB be disconnected before step D?
It doesn't matter whether you remain connected via USB before step D. The phone doesn't "know" that it's connected.

FYI: Even though I had rooted and flashed my phone, my son's phone, and my daughter's phone many months ago, I finally got around to doing my wife's ZVC phone last week. I guess that you're still stuck on ZVC like she was thanks to our deliberate update-killing battery-pull-trick that we did to preserve free hotspot way back when. One nice thing about doing the ZVD-based update.zip is that it preserves your apps and data, just like if you were doing an official over-the-air Sprint update. From there you can follow the main tutorial to root, do a backup, etc.

I'm on ZVD-based Reborn ROM. It's nice. The Ice Cream Sandwich based custom ROMs that are furthest along in devlopment (beta now), are ZVD-based, so I'd recommend staying with a ZVD-based ROM. ICS is nice and the devs are building in stuff like data2SD, apps2SD, etc., essentially giving us unlimited RAM (if you have a Class-6 or faster SD card).
 
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I guess that you're still stuck on ZVC like she was thanks to our deliberate update-killing battery-pull-trick that we did to preserve free hotspot way back when.

No, after that, assuming they wouldn’t make that mistake twice, I did jump into ZVJ. It behaves, but nothing really worth the upgrade hassle. And then the goofy part:

One thing stock ZVJ won’t allow is third party phone-answering apps. Tried ‘em all, gave up, went to Sprint and they sent me back to 2.2.2. So I’m in the process of redressing my naked droid and --get this -- the 2.3.3 prompt comes back. This where we pull the battery. But I was so busy reinstalling apps that I accidentally tapped Install Now. And that’s how I’m on ZVJ, twice.

So I’m about to try the 2.2.2 downgrade all by myself, and maybe, doubtfully, but maybe your root miracle.
 
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I hadn't heard about the third-party phone-answering issue with ZVJ. If you try rooting and installing a custom ROM, I think you'll be glad you did. One of the nice things about rooting is that you can make Nandroid backups and Titanium backups, so you have a safety valve in case anything happens to your phone (including losing it).

Three nice things about installing Reborn ROM:
1) You get a lot more memory available for apps & data. I used to have to hassle with juggling installed apps because I'd get the "Low phone storage" warning. Not anymore. More apps installed. No warning.
2) You can uses Reborn's smart WiFi capability to automatically connect to WiFi when a trusted WiFi network is available, but automatically switch to 3G when no trusted WiFi network is available. Love that. WiFi saves battery life. It gives me a faster connection when available. I never touch it anymore.
3) You can set on-demand overclocking, which speeds up the phone when needed (at the expense of battery life) but slows it down when not needed (which helps battery life). Overall, it provides better battery life.
 
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So I’m about to try the 2.2.2 downgrade all by myself

A) Read the introductory part of the main guide
B) download Sprint's stock ZVD ROM called "update.zip"
C) Copy that ZVD "update.zip" onto the root directory
D) Turn off the phone
E) Boot into recovery mode
F) Select “apply sdcard:update.zip” (and confirm). It'll take a minute

Problem! First, it didn’t ask me to confirm, I just hit the menu button, per their instructions, and off it went. And the minute to load turned into three, then ten. Then I yanked the battery to get to step D and resumed, same result. Then one hour, then two.

I ended up taking it to the Sprint store, provided a feeble story and they did a really hard boot. I never got to step G but it’s acting fine and Froyo-ish.

G) Reboot and then go back into recovery mode.
H) Redo step F, by selecting “apply sdcard:update.zip”
I) Select "Reboot”. (It will take a long time to boot up. Don’t worry.)
J) Clean up by deleting the update.zip file from your SD card.

Anyway, I presume my answer app will work, but after having to see the store to get there, I’m too spooked to root again. And yes, the Ginger prompt came right back, but this time I did the old More Info Yank trick.
 
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I ended up taking it to the Sprint store, provided a feeble story and they did a really hard boot.
I'm sorry that you had trouble with the downgrade to ZVD. I've modified my instructions above, adding an optional "wipe-data/factory-reset" step for people who have problems. It's probably what the folks at the Sprint store did for you.

You didn't root your phone. You just installed the stock Sprint ZVD ROM from the Sprint website. Sprint put that ZVD ROM (and downgrade instructions) on their website for people who were unhappy with ZVH.

At this point, if you're on ZVD, you'd find it easy to follow the main part of the guide if you want to root and install a custom ROM.
 
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Sprint put that ZVD ROM (and instructions) on their website for people who were unhappy with ZVH.

Yep, I saw that back during the ZVH uproar.

At this point, if you're on ZVD, you'd find it easy to follow the main part of the guide if you want to root and install a custom ROM.

I might have jumped right in yesterday, if the downgrade had behaved. But any instance that compels me to go to the Sprint store means another chunk of time to feel invincible again.

The endless debate is that this stock midget droid already does more than I really need. Rooting would be done purely out of curiosity -- the possibility of causing a problem is/isn
 
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You're basically invincible as long as you have a recovery on your phone. If you have the stock recovery you can install the stock ZVD update.zip. If you have a custom recovery you can install anything you want. But I understand your reluctance to fix it if it ain't broke-- especially if you have no trouble living with the itnernal storage. I was constantly having to juggle apps to keep from getting the dreaded "low memory" warning before I installed a custom ROM.
 
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