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Root The right way to root and upgrade to Gingerbread?

danm003

Lurker
Dec 19, 2010
4
1
Hi,

Firstly I have been reading loads about rooting and upgrading to Gingerbread, and I feel I am in a position and feel confident enough to go ahead and go it.

I have also read about different methods, and I feel the following is the easiest and less risky one...

Could somebody confirm this is the right thing to do and I am not forgetting anything? That'd be great! :p

1. Create a goldcard that is basically a backup of my phone and everything.
How To Make Gold Card for HTC Desire HD

2. Follow the instructions here:
[TOOL][VIDEO] One click Radio S-OFF, SimUnlock (Easy Root & S-OFF Guide) - xda-developers
One-click radio S-OFF tool.

3. After following those instructions, can then go ahead and find a Gingerbread ROM to flash to the phone. For example, this here: [ROM] Android Revolution HD 4.0 β 4 | Gingerbread & HTC Sense 2.1 | Android 2.3.2 - xda-developers

That's it. Or is it? I have the feeling I am missing something! :thinking: Anybody put my mind at ease or offer any tips?

Thanks a million!
 
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Hi,

Firstly I have been reading loads about rooting and upgrading to Gingerbread, and I feel I am in a position and feel confident enough to go ahead and go it.

I have also read about different methods, and I feel the following is the easiest and less risky one...

Could somebody confirm this is the right thing to do and I am not forgetting anything? That'd be great! :p

Hi there!

1. Create a goldcard that is basically a backup of my phone and everything.
How To Make Gold Card for HTC Desire HD


You only need to create a goldcard if your phone is carrier branded (this does not mean locked/simlocked, but is where you have, like I did, carrier branding when you power the phone up or you have carrier branded apps). I am on Orange UK and I had to create a goldcard, before I could downgrade to a rootable version of Froyo. The goldcard does not back anything up, it simply tricks your phone in to thinking that it is non-branded and thus allows you to install non-branded firmware on the phone.

EDIT - You may loose data/apps when you downgrade... any apps can be downloaded again by going through your history in the marketplace. Your contacts should be saved, if you sync them with googlemail - I lost ALL numbers when I downgraded, as I hadn't done that!


The above is correct to root... as I said above though, if your phone is branded, then you'll need the goldcard first - not difficult, but that's what toook me the most time!

3. After following those instructions, can then go ahead and find a Gingerbread ROM to flash to the phone. For example, this here: [ROM] Android Revolution HD 4.0 β 4 | Gingerbread & HTC Sense 2.1 | Android 2.3.2 - xda-developers

Yeah - that's right.

I'll see if I can find the post I put in another thread for you... includes a video on rooting too! :)
 
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Brilliant reply, just what I was looking for, thanks!

I am living in Germany but bought my DHD on eBay before Christmas as an unwanted t-Mobile upgrade, hence it has all their s**t on it and takes years to load up :(

Hopefully will get it done tonight and get Gingerbread on it and report back, thanks again!
 
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Brilliant reply, just what I was looking for, thanks!

No worries mate!! :D

I am living in Germany but bought my DHD on eBay before Christmas as an unwanted t-Mobile upgrade, hence it has all their s**t on it and takes years to load up :(

Hopefully will get it done tonight and get Gingerbread on it and report back, thanks again!

I rooted about a month ago... took AGES to get the goldcard bit to work... I was using HEX Edittor and it just wouldn't do it properly. Once I got it to work, then the downgrade and root and flashing custom GB roms is EASY!

I'm now on Cyanogenmod 7... this is much better!!

Are you still on Froyo? What version are you running? If it's build 1.32, then you won't need to downgrade, just root...
 
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No worries mate!! :D

I rooted about a month ago... took AGES to get the goldcard bit to work... I was using HEX Edittor and it just wouldn't do it properly. Once I got it to work, then the downgrade and root and flashing custom GB roms is EASY!

I'm now on Cyanogenmod 7... this is much better!!

Are you still on Froyo? What version are you running? If it's build 1.32, then you won't need to downgrade, just root...
Android version 2.2.1
Software number 1.84.110.3

So looks like I need to goldcard, downgrade, root, upgrade. Right? :)
 
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Android version 2.2.1
Software number 1.84.110.3

So looks like I need to goldcard, downgrade, root, upgrade. Right? :)

Yeah - that sounds about right. I was onn 1.84 when I started on the path of rooting.

Just lookijng for another post I put in a thread about how I created the goldcard... much easier method than going through HEX editting... will post it here for you in a bit!
 
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After a bit of digging... found what I said elsewhere...

king_dinki - I had the same problems when creating a goldcard.

It's worth noting that not all SD cards work as goldcards... I bought a 2gb SD card specially to make a goldcard, but it didn't work. I ended up using the 8gb one that came with the phone as a goldcard - I copied everything off the SD card in to a folder on my desktop, created and used the goldcard to do the downgrade and then, once complete, formatted the SD card again and copied everything back on to it, as if it had never been a goldcard!

I followed the steps on a couple of websites EXACTLY as they were written/in the videos, but it would not work... I then did the following:

Download "goldcardhelper" (https://market.android.com/details?id=name.starnberger.guenther.android.goldcard&feature=search_result) from the market - this will give you the MMC2 number (already in reverse) so that you can put it in the website to get the goldcard image emailed to you.

Download "goldcard tool" ([PC Application] GoldCardTool - Android @ MoDaCo) for your PC - this will create a goldcard with an SD card, while it is in your phone. I think the tool is actually for the Desire, not the Desire HD... where it says to put the MMC1 number, ignore that and just put the MMC2 number... it worked fine for me!!

Once you have the goldcard sorted, the downgrade and then rooting, is pretty straight forward.

Let me know if this helps/solves your issues! :thinking:


Edit - if you want to have a look at the issues I was having, see my thread about this issue ([URL="http://androidforums.com/desire-hd-all-things-root/321220-dhd-downgrading-before-rooting-problem.html)"]http://androidforums.com/desire-hd-all-things-root/321220-dhd-downgrading-before-rooting-problem.html) [/URL]

Hope this is of some help! Let me know how you get on with everything! :D
 
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