To Root or Not to Root?

[darmeen]

I had two devices show up in Disk Drives and two under portable devices...I had to delete all four (while the nook was plugged in to the pc), delete the .android folder, delete the ADB folder in the root of C:, then unplug the nook...then I rad the ADB pack, let it reinstall everything, then hooked up the nook and it showed up in Device Manager under other devices, then quickly moved to Android Phone Device (or something similar)...after that...when I ran the ADB in CMD shell, it displayed my serial number.

That is exactly how I got ADB working on my computer last night.

It was the two devices under Portable devices that I kept missing when doing the uninstalls (didn't see them there) and those were the two that kept me from doing this correctly the first time.

 

[AshleyBDG]

Thank you this was very helpful. And you're right, we've just had poor timing. I'm actually tempted to just wait a couple weeks for the autonooter 1.1.... but at least now I have a better idea on how to copy to my sd card, thanks!

@Ashley. I tend to agree that rooting w/o a stop-the-OTA is not of great value. Getting the images onto the SD card is not bad. Either use and SD card reader on your PC, or better yet, get it rooted, for now, and then just put the SD card in the nook and connect it to your PC and simply drag them over onto whatever drive letter your Nook shows up as. After that, installing ROM-mngr and CWR w/o being connected via wireless (and risking a forced 1.1 update) is tough. That's where I'm stuck right now. I'll be trying some things myself this eve, as well as continuing to listen to the other peoples' kind help. It appears you and I, among others, stepped in at just the wrong time, where we get to go through the normal learning curve, plus, all the little hiccups that happen right after a new release. I bet, had we happened to have bought our nooks a month later, this would all be pretty smooth. Gotta love the steep learning curve. The one thing I haven't considered for a while, and will go back and read up on tonight, is whether I am capable of learning to root manually (vs autonooter) in which case I could just let 1.1.0 happen, and then go root her manually. One of the things I'll tryto explore this eve. Good, luck, and hang in there.

 

[rogand]

That's funny Vic. The two portables were the only ones that I DID find
Thanks for the tip on looking for disk drives - maybe that will do it, as under USB, I found nothing.
Glad to see the tip to do the deletions with the Nook connected. Can't recall if I had it connected or not, but will be sure to this time.
thanks again
R

 

[darmeen]

That's funny Vic. The two portables were the only ones that I DID find
Thanks for the tip on looking for disk drives - maybe that will do it, as under USB, I found nothing.
Glad to see the tip to do the deletions with the Nook connected. Can't recall if I had it connected or not, but will be sure to this time.
thanks again
R

Oh, its funny now, but wasn't funny last night while I was fighting with it! LOL

 

[rogand]

Iinteresting, It looked to be going very well, with every step completing, unlike yesterday.
But ultimatley, when I run adb devices on the command line, still no device serial number shown.
When I go back to the device manager, it's back to showing 2 nook devices each under Disk Drives and Portable Devices.

 

[Marek]

Hey guys. I successfully rooted my NC last night. It runs great. I decided not to overclock or any of that "hardcore" stuff for now, just wanted to get to the market.

 

[darmeen]

Iinteresting, It looked to be going very well, with every step completing, unlike yesterday.
But ultimatley, when I run adb devices on the command line, still no device serial number shown.
When I go back to the device manager, it's back to showing 2 nook devices each under Disk Drives and Portable Devices.

Okay...when you deleted the four spots in device manager...did you also delete the .android folder in your user folder and the android-sdk folder in root? I found that adb was running in the background and I had to stop that process before I could delete them. with your nook plugged in, there should be zero listings for it in device manager and both those folders gone...then unplug the nook, (I ended up using the adb pack since it was a one step deal...and remember, just because you have a file that is newer, doesn't mean it will work better...how many times in our lives have we had to roll back a driver because the update jacked with something we had) install the adb pack (it will create the folders for you) then I followed the instructions on nookdevs.com

Open device manager.
Start > Run > devmgmt.msc > Enter. Or,
Start > Right-Click Computer > Properties > 'Hardware' Tab > Device Manager Or,
Windows Key + Pause\Break > 'Hardware' Tab > Device Manager
Plug the nookColor into your computer's USB port and unlock the device. The "USB Mode" message should pop up on the screen of the device.
If the "Nook" device is detected skip to step 2.
1. Unplug and replug the nookCOLOR from your computer
Go under the "Action" tab and click "Scan for hardware changes"
If it says "Nook" under "Other Hardware", then your done with this step (edit by: ColinB)

2. Now that you have identified the nookColor
Right-Click the device > Update Driver > Browse my computer > Let me pick > Have Disk
In the "Copy manufacturers files from:" window enter C:\android-sdk-windows\usb_driver
Press OK. This should install the correct drivers. (If a dialog appears asking which driver to choose, select "Android Composite ADB Device")
Disconnect nookColor from your computer (unplug the USB cord)
Reconnect nookColor
Windows should automatically detect the device and install all necessary drivers, including ADB.
You may not see nookColor in the device manager. That's ok. You should see an Android Composite ADB Interface in the device manager list, if so, you're done.
IV. Verify that everything worked

Start > Run > cmd > Enter
cd\
cd android-sdk-windows\platform-tools
adb kill-server
adb devices
If you get output that looks like the following you have succeeded:
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached
[YOUR NOOKCOLOR SN] device


Read more: NookColor USB ADB - nookDevs
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike

This is EXACTLY what I did to get it working (I am running Win7 32bit Pro)

 

[darmeen]

Hey guys. I successfully rooted my NC last night. It runs great. I decided not to overclock or any of that "hardcore" stuff for now, just wanted to get to the market.

That is what I said...then my 8gb sd card came in a few days later...and I just really needed something to do with it...and CWR filled that need

 

[rogand]

Hmmmm, I got all 4 removed, and the .android folder chucked, but don't recall if I got rid of the sdk folder in root. I definitely did NOT stop the adb process (not sure how to kill it yet, so a pointer there would be appreciated) but I dont' think it was running, since I had not trouble deleting the .android folder. I'll try all that again tonight.
And then use the adb package again -- it's a lot simpler, and a must, since my continual fail point in the 4-step version is the system calling my usb-driver invalid when I try to do the manual update of the usb driver in the device manager. I'd REALLY like to understand the roadblock there, just academically, and for my understanding and maybe having a use for it one day.

Btw, I did finally, after the lastest ADB install failure pushing midnight last night, finally risk firing up wireless, and using your helpful tip on how to shut if on/off quickly, got Astro rom mngr and CWR all working (I'd put the latter two in correctly, but just hadn't been able to run them w/o Astro) Now, at some point I need to go read up on just what those apps each do and are capable of, so I can say I learned something instead of rather blindly following the cookbook.

The one interesting thing I did note is that my contact manager still shows the vestigial/partial (As and Bs) contact list that somehow didn't get deleted when I started from scratch. But nothing more, which means somehow, I have far less contacts now than when I started on 1.0.0 and immediately thereafter on 1.1.0.

So, this is definitely one of those cases where the latest driver is not the greatest driver. I need to research this further.

thanks for all the help thus far

Roger

p.s. are there any "forum reader" tools out there for android. I haven't gotten to play with the NC much yet, but on a smartphone, even a large screened one like my epic-4g, the full browser one is a bit cumbersome. TIA. - R

 

[darmeen]

Hmmmm, I got all 4 removed, and the .android folder chucked, but don't recall if I got rid of the sdk folder in root. I definitely did NOT stop the adb process (not sure how to kill it yet, so a pointer there would be appreciated) but I dont' think it was running, since I had not trouble deleting the .android folder. I'll try all that again tonight.
And then use the adb package again -- it's a lot simpler, and a must, since my continual fail point in the 4-step version is the system calling my usb-driver invalid when I try to do the manual update of the usb driver in the device manager. I'd REALLY like to understand the roadblock there, just academically, and for my understanding and maybe having a use for it one day.

Btw, I did finally, after the lastest ADB install failure pushing midnight last night, finally risk firing up wireless, and using your helpful tip on how to shut if on/off quickly, got Astro rom mngr and CWR all working (I'd put the latter two in correctly, but just hadn't been able to run them w/o Astro) Now, at some point I need to go read up on just what those apps each do and are capable of, so I can say I learned something instead of rather blindly following the cookbook.

The one interesting thing I did note is that my contact manager still shows the vestigial/partial (As and Bs) contact list that somehow didn't get deleted when I started from scratch. But nothing more, which means somehow, I have far less contacts now than when I started on 1.0.0 and immediately thereafter on 1.1.0.

So, this is definitely one of those cases where the latest driver is not the greatest driver. I need to research this further.

thanks for all the help thus far

Roger

p.s. are there any "forum reader" tools out there for android. I haven't gotten to play with the NC much yet, but on a smartphone, even a large screened one like my epic-4g, the full browser one is a bit cumbersome. TIA. - R

To stop the ADB, I just did the ole CTRL+ALT+DEL and found it in the processes tab

There is an app for these forums...just search the market for android tablets forum app

 

[rogand]

Cool, I just downloaded the app for my phone. I'm about to plow into the ADB attempt again. I was thinking the ADB process was on the Nook, not the PC, so excuse my dumb question on killing it. I think I made similar, but opposite error during my last attempt, insomuch as I deleted the .android folder from the wrong device (PC instead of Nook) too. I'll try to get it right this time. I DEF need to have ADB so I can join in the fun stuff all you big kids are getting to do. I don't have a real target as far as further-hacked-2.1 vs 2.2/2.3 vs Honeycomb, but need to be prepared for whatever it takes to get fully functional google apps running, which is the whole reason I bought the beast to begin with

 

[gadgetrants]

Roger, you're a tough nut to crack! To be honest, I haven't quite figured out at what level to pitch things for you...I tend to treat people with questions as beginners, and then try to gauge their appetite for complexity and details as things progress. Several times I've underestimated your knowledge and skill. At some point, I might try and post a very basic description of the ADB process for absolute newbies, and perhaps those who are above that level can skim and pull out whatever they find useful, while the newbs can follow it line-by-line. I consider it a real pleasure to see others get their device to behave as desired, and I hope we can get you there!

-Matt

 

[rogand]

Thanks Matt, I'm a lot more technical (EE with lots of semiconductor physics, and a moderate amount of software in embedded devices and devtools) that my utter lack of success might indicate, but practically speaking, we may clearly consider me to be quite ignorant (I'm smiling, but not joking)

So, just ran through it again, using the ADBpack install, and again, it seemed to work, but, when I plugged the nook back in as instructed, it immediately installed itself 4x into the device manager (again creating 2 entries each under portable-devices and disk-drives, and NOT creating a composite device. Thus, when I run the command line prompt adb, it still returns nothing in the attached device list. The breakdown seems to be in auto-creating the diskdrive and portable device entries, vs creating the composite device entries. The key may be to disable/customize whatever mechanism is creating the new default/undesired 4 entries.

Note, there is only one composite device anywhere in my device manager, and it is under USB controllers listed simply as "usb composite device" and the details show it being some microsoft thing from 2006, which seems pretty safely-said pre-android.

This is unfortunately the nature of windows systems, especially god-awful Vista. There are just so many combination and permutations of installed sw/drivers that exact behavior is extremely unpredictable.

Thanks for all those continuing to humor me.

 

[rogand]

p.s. i wonder if changing the order in the path environment variable so that the android-sdk was in the list before the various windows/system folders, might make the desired USB drivers installed as part of the pak be found in the auto search before the ones we don't want.? Just a thought.

 

[darmeen]

This is unfortunately the nature of windows systems, especially god-awful Vista.

"Well there's your problem...right there!"

Hang in there Roger...we will get you square yet!