Root new to the droid.. need help [un]rooting

[Bendroid3.88]

So, I just switched to the Droid from the Blackberry. I love it because everything I hated about the Berry I no longer have with my droid! Needless to say I'm pretty damn lost even after hours of researching I just found about a million different ways to do what I need to do so it's time for some hands-on. And here's the deal..

My brother also has the Droid, rooted, ultimate droid 3.1 (I think), CPU tuner, all that good stuff and I was hoping to do that as well. He started rooting it, he had no problem with his. Mine has the Superuser icon, when you open it, there's no apps in the list, nothing. He said he thinks it needs to be unrooted and rooted again because it wasn't properly rooted in the first place. Also, when we restarted it and held down X (or the up key or whatever) it acted like it wouldn't budge past a certain screen on start up. Any help on fixing this the proper way would be amazing. I'd just like to get all of this done before I transferred files and such. Keep in mind, I'm a noob coming over from a Berry, this is all a little foreign to me yet, not completely illiterate though. Thanks in advance!

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

First, superuser won't have any apps in it UNTIL you run a root app, and it asks for permissions, and you allow them. So it's probably rooted fine. Try using a root app like shoot me or setcpu or titanium backup. it should pop up a box that says "xxx program is asking for superuser permissions. Allow or deny?" or something like that. Make sure the box that says "remember this decision" is checked, and click allow. THEN the app should show up in superuser.

Second, power + x and power + up are both valid options that do different things. Before I can tell you if you actually have a problem or not, I need to know which one you did, and what screen you got.

Power + X puts you into recovery. You should see an exclamation point inside of a triangle and a little android. Press the search (magnifying glass) button on your keyboard (the physical one, not the capacitive one on the front of the phone). This is stock recovery.

Power + Up puts you into bootloader. It should be a black screen with white text that says "Bootloader, battery ok, ok to program" and some other stuff. This is what you use if you have to SBF your phone at some point, and it won't boot up. The majority of non-power users will never have to use this.

 

[Bendroid3.88]

First, superuser won't have any apps in it UNTIL you run a root app, and it asks for permissions, and you allow them. So it's probably rooted fine. Try using a root app like shoot me or setcpu or titanium backup. it should pop up a box that says "xxx program is asking for superuser permissions. Allow or deny?" or something like that. Make sure the box that says "remember this decision" is checked, and click allow. THEN the app should show up in superuser.

Second, power + x and power + up are both valid options that do different things. Before I can tell you if you actually have a problem or not, I need to know which one you did, and what screen you got.

Power + X puts you into recovery. You should see an exclamation point inside of a triangle and a little android. Press the search (magnifying glass) button on your keyboard (the physical one, not the capacitive one on the front of the phone). This is stock recovery.

Power + Up puts you into bootloader. It should be a black screen with white text that says "Bootloader, battery ok, ok to program" and some other stuff. This is what you use if you have to SBF your phone at some point, and it won't boot up. The majority of non-power users will never have to use this.

Thank you so much! That makes sense. He did the Power + X, didn't do the magnifying glass but I'm sure that's where we went wrong. It just stayed on the screen with the little Android and the exclamation point inside the triangle...

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

Yeah, if you don't press the magnifying glass, nothing happens. You can use that screen to do a factory data reset (deletes any data that's been added to the phone since it left the factory, something you should do if the phone's new to you, but not brand new), and wipe the cache (just a good idea for a new to you phone, especially if you're doing a factory data reset, too).

 

[Bendroid3.88]

Okay, got Titanium Backup (& BusyBox) and it says, "Sorry, I could not acquire root privileges. This application will *not* work! Please verify that your ROM is rooted and includes BusyBox, and try again."

 

[Bendroid3.88]

Corrupt superuser file, time to go back to stock.. This time I need a rooting file that's not corrupt... oh well!

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

I don't know much about rooting the original droid, the way I did my D2G won't work for you, sorry. Free bump, though.

 

[teddyearp]

Bendroid, if I were you, I would just go ahead and spend a week or so getting used to your new phone. Go ahead and transfer your contacts, etc. to it. Once you do, all your contacts and apps will be tied to your google (gmail) account and will always be easily restored pretty much no matter what you do to root, or more importantly unroot your phone as unrooting may involve a factory data reset.

I am glad that I got my A855 in the beginning before it was rooted. It gave me a week to get over the "HuH?". then another week to go "Ahhh". Then I only had to wait two more until we had root.

I've got a few guides I've written that I hope will be of help to you. Read them and if you have more questions, feel free to ask.

good luck