Root Simple rooting of thunderbolt with 2.11.605.5

Welcome to Androidforums.com

I am going to move your thread to the all things root section so someone can help answer your question.

Check out scotty's OP here http://androidforums.com/thunderbolt-all-things-root/418539-thunderbolt-root-unroot-thread.html

Use revolutionary to root, it is fairly easy compared to older methods, be sure to watch the youtube video

Almost every rom out for the bolt right now is GB, it sounds like you would be looking for a desensed or AOSP rom but I would suggest you first root the phone then begin to look at what rom you want to use, just take it 1 step at a time to keep things simple.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask

And welcome to AF

studlyed said:

I'm pretty new to this whole rooting thing. I've looked it up before, but never had the time. Now I'm looking at it again, but I can't seem to find any simple easy to understand instructions. Been googling around for about 3 hours now. Pretty much, what I'm wondering (and this would probably help other people as well), is what exactly would I need to do this(Rom's, applications, files, etc). And hopefully some simple instructions. What I have found is your huge gigantic list of Roms, but what does each one do, what version of android are they? Some looked like they were the old 1.x version, but yet posted in November? I was hoping to find a lean version of the OS without the Verzion and HTC stuff packed in there. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in adavance,
-Ed-

Click to expand...

Let me start off by saying this is the first phone I rooted so I'm pretty much a n00b too. So here's what I did and what I would suggest:

-Go to this thread: http://androidforums.com/thunderbolt-all-things-root/418539-thunderbolt-root-unroot-thread.html

-Utilize the revolutionary tool, but prior to doing this take a look at the video that is posted on that subject. The video is a step by step walkthrough of rooting your device. It is executed perfectly and very basically. It's near impossible to screw up if you follow the instructions. The description of the video has links to everything you should need.

-Once you have watched the video attempt to follow along with it while you root. As I said, it's super basic and easy to follow, a very well done video.

-Once you have rooted your phone I would suggest downloading ROM Manager and Titanium Backup from the market.
-ROM Manager will allow you to flash ROMs without having to load
into recovery and it will provide you a means of backing up the
state of your phone. It's incredibly important to do this before
you attempt to flash a ROM so you have a point to return to.

It is also important to learn and understand how to Backup/Restore
from Recovery. It's the only way to recover from a reboot loop as
you won't be able to access applications. Please see comments below regarding
issues others have had with ROM Manager.

-Titanium Backup will allow you to back up your applications and
data in them. This honestly isn't as important as ROM Manager as
you can always re-download apps from the market, but it makes
things easier when bringing up a new ROM.

-Once you have downloaded these applications (and have root access) I would suggest utilizing them. First, back up your phone with ROM Manager. This can be done by going into ROM Manager and selecting Backup Current ROM. **NOTE** Do this with a high battery level and NOT plugged into anything (computer nor wall charger)

-After you have told it to backup I would suggest returning to ROM Manager and selecting Manage and Restore Backups to ensure the backup you took is in the list.

-Next, open Titanium Backup and select Backup/Restore then press your menu button and select Batch. I always choose Backup all user apps + system data. Some of this data may not restore properly if Sense is missing, so when restoring to an Vanilla Android ROM I would suggest only restoring user apps.

-Things should be backed up now and you can attempt to flash a ROM

-First, connect your phone to a computer and enable disk drive. You will need to place ROMs onto the SD card in order to load them. it is suggested that you just put them at the highest level of the card, not within a folder.

-Download desired ROM. DO NOT UNZIP THE FILES
=In your case I would suggest Liquid Smooth 3.1
(Liquid Smooth Roms)
or
Cyanogen
([Rom] Unofficial Cyanogenmod 7 2.3.7 Builds [Updated 11/14/11 06:00 Pm Est] - RootzWiki)

I personally prefer Liquid Smooth 3.1 for a Vanilla Android Experience.

-Once you have placed these on the root of your SD card disconnect the phone from the computer. Also, do NOT place it on the charger.

-Open ROM Manager and select Install ROM from SD Card. Find the desired .zip file and select it. A menu will pop up, select Wipe Data and Cache and Wipe Dalvik Cache. We do not need to perform a ROM backup as we did that earlier.

-Select OK and let it work away. This could take a bit of time to boot up the first time, so just let it do it's thing for a while.

That's it, you should be up and running a new ROM. Just remember, stay patient and don't panic. Those are possibly the most important things.

If you need more help there are plenty of great resources on these forums and I'm sure they'll help you out.

If you have more questions just let us know.

-BEST OF LUCK

The only place I am disagreeing with you eipee is the use of rom manager. There are more issues caused by rom manager IMO than it is helpful for. Some roms require you wipe /system and I do not believe this is a choice within the app. Also if someone gets stuck in a bootloop they have to manually boot into recovery and flash from there, if they are used to using recovery then it isn't that big of a deal but if they are used to a crutch and haven't dealt with using recovery much then it can make for quite an ordeal.

i agree completely with the statements aBout rom manager. rom manager is an app,in a working rom,and as such will not always be available for you. if you are stuck in a bootloop,or a non-working rom,your only choice will be to go to recovery to fix the prollem.

not knowing how to manually navigate the menus in a custom recovery can casue quite a moment of panic when your expensive phone is currently a non functional paperweight

i would very strongly reccomend to learn how to manually flash,wipe,etc. in recovery first. once youre comfortable with that,then you can use rom manager if you want-and at least youll know how to fix it if/when things go bad

Cool if you have any questions please feel free to ask!

And welcome to AF

I actually mentioned the importance of learning how to use recovery up top in the part about ROM Manager, should have probably broken it out and highlighted it.

I personally use ROM Manager and have had little issue doing so, however I have been stuck in reboot loops more than once and have had to rectify through recovery.

I'll break it out to be on the safe side, thanks for adding input.

You can put rom zips anywhere you want on the SD if you are just using recovery to install them.

If you want keyboard more like the stock on try GO Keyboard

studlyed said:

i was able to follow those instructions and links fairly easily. Biggest point I got stuck on in the video was the "su" file. Took a bit of searching but finally found it on the documentation page. Also found out that it doesn't work when you have to have a proxy due to stuff at work But a bit of fanangling some system32/drivers/etc/hosts and iis and manually downloading the files I got the stuff installed. The roms are really easy to install in the recovery manager. Not sure why anyone would use the ROM manager? I first did the liquid smooth, but the keyboard is annoyingly tiny so I'm going to try the other one that was mentioned in a few minutes. One question, can I put the roms inside of a "Roms" sub folder on my SD card? Or does it need to be in the root?

Click to expand...

As Yeahha said you can use a subdirectory.

I personally use Swype, so I don't even notice the stock keyboard on these ROMs haha.

I think you'll find CM7 or Liquid Smooth to be the best out there (at least in my experience they have been).

Glad to hear you got everything up and running easily!