[HowTo] Root the latest OTA when the HTC Unlocker tool doesn't work

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So, you've got the latest OTA (1.55.531.3) and the HTC unlocker tool won't work? Tired of waiting for HTC to issue a fix/resume the OTA? You no longer have to wait in agony.

These are the steps I took to unlock the latest OTA. They worked for me, they may not work for you. Anything you do to your phone is not my responsibility.

That said..

• Backup what you can. Your phone is going to be wiped.
  
• Make sure your battery is charged up.
  
• Download the full 1.55.531.3 image. This contains the confirmation splash screen which wasn't loaded on older MT4GSes, and is the reason the unlocker tool won't work on our devices. You can get the full image (it's over 400MB) here:
  

  http://www.filefactory.com/file/c0fd...956_signed.zip

• Download the CWM recovery image:
  
  

  http://download.clockworkmod.com/rec...doubleshot.img

• Rename the full image downloaded in the first step to PG59IMG.zip and place it on the root of the SD card in your phone.
  
• Shut the phone down, remove the battery, and boot back up while holding both the volume down and power buttons down.
  
• The phone will check the PG59IMG.zip file and will ask you if you want to restore that image. You want to do this, but keep in mind this is going to wipe your phone. All data will be lost.
  
• The phone will restore the image. This takes a few minutes. When it's done, you'll be prompted to reboot, and you'll boot into a completely stock MT4GS experience.
  
• Use the unlock tool on htcdev.com to generate your unlock code. The splash screen is now on your phone, and you should be able to unlock (I had no issues).
  
• I rebooted at this point, just to be safe, and set up my phone.
  
• Copy the recovery image you downloaded earlier into the directory where you're running fastboot. Rename it to recovery.img
  
• Shut down, boot into the bootloader/fastboot, and enter the following command to flash CWM recovery:
  
  

  fastboot flash recovery recovery.img

• At this point, you should probably reboot the bootloader before entering CWM. Once you've done that, you can go ahead and flash superuser/roms/etc.
  

Here's a pointer to restoring your phone to stock, courtesy of blue:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...0&postcount=24

So if we've gotten this far, is S-OFF going to gain us anything more? Are we still locked out of certain areas? The tool worked for me, but I'm using the rest of your guide to flash CWM. Thanks for writing it!

Originally Posted by xzuhto

So if we've gotten this far, is S-OFF going to gain us anything more? Are we still locked out of certain areas? The tool worked for me, but I'm using the rest of your guide to flash CWM. Thanks for writing it!

In my opinion, S-Off won't really gain you much more. You'll have to flash kernels separately when flashing ROMs, but that doesn't seem to be a big deal (IMO).

You could probably flash back to the original release software if you wanted, and gain S-OFF with revolutionary, but I haven't tried that and have no idea if it will work.

The only thing you can't do with Unlocked/S-ON is flash radios.

Well in that case this phone is right where I want it. I've never messed with kernels on any phone I've had previously nor have I messed with flashing radios. I just got done completing the steps and I'm now root along with CWM. Great work throwing this up for everyone.

Originally Posted by jonnycat26

So, you've got the latest OTA (1.55.531.3) and the HTC unlocker tool won't work? Tired of waiting for HTC to issue a fix/resume the OTA? You no longer have to wait in agony.

These are the steps I took to unlock the latest OTA. They worked for me, they may not work for you. Anything you do to your phone is not my responsibility.

That said..

• Backup what you can. Your phone is going to be wiped.
  
• Make sure your battery is charged up.
  
• Download the full 1.55.531.3 image. This contains the confirmation splash screen which wasn't loaded on older MT4GSes, and is the reason the unlocker tool won't work on our devices. You can get the full image (it's over 400MB) here:
  
• Download the CWM recovery image:
  
  
  
• Rename the full image downloaded in the first step to PG59IMG.zip and place it on the root of the SD card in your phone.
  
• Shut the phone down, remove the battery, and boot back up while holding both the volume down and power buttons down.
  
• The phone will check the PG59IMG.zip file and will ask you if you want to restore that image. You want to do this, but keep in mind this is going to wipe your phone. All data will be lost.
  
• The phone will restore the image. This takes a few minutes. When it's done, you'll be prompted to reboot, and you'll boot into a completely stock MT4GS experience.
  
• Use the unlock tool on htcdev.com to generate your unlock code. The splash screen is now on your phone, and you should be able to unlock (I had no issues).
  
• I rebooted at this point, just to be safe, and set up my phone.
  
• Copy the recovery image you downloaded earlier into the directory where you're running fastboot. Rename it to recovery.img
  
• Shut down, boot into the bootloader/fastboot, and enter the following command to flash CWM recovery:
  
  
  
• At this point, you should probably reboot the bootloader before entering CWM. Once you've done that, you can go ahead and flash superuser/roms/etc.
  

the doubleshot img downloads painfully slow, do you have another link?

edit: also i think you missed somthing here"[*]Shut down, boot into the bootloader/fastboot, and enter the following command to flash CWM recovery:
"

Originally Posted by ac3theone

the doubleshot img downloads painfully slow, do you have another link?

...

Well, where football is hosting the new PG59IMG.zip file is the only place we have it - i just found it yesterday and we haven't had time to up it anywhere else yet.

We are working on making mirrors for it now - give us some time to get set up with our new data.

---------- Post added at 01:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:33 AM ----------

Originally Posted by jonnycat26

In my opinion, S-Off won't really gain you much more. You'll have to flash kernels separately when flashing ROMs, but that doesn't seem to be a big deal (IMO).

You could probably flash back to the original release software if you wanted, and gain S-OFF with revolutionary, but I haven't tried that and have no idea if it will work.

The only thing you can't do with Unlocked/S-ON is flash radios.

No, you can't go back to retail factory if you are S-ON. This new PG59IMG.zip I found is the furthest back you can go completely.

With S-ON you cannot replace hboot, or radio - those two are a big deal - i'm still working on an S-OFF solution for S-ON people with hboot 1.45.0013.

With S-OFF I can swap out hboots on a whim, and thrice43 even flashed a Sensation hboot to his doubleshot and it worked out for him - but with S-ON you cannot do this. (and if you could, you would brick)

S-OFF is very much preferable to S-ON UNLOCKED.

I've also had problems flashing OTA updates through stock recovery manually when S-ON where I had no trouble doing so while S-OFF.

There are still a lot of things you can't do with your device while S-ON.

EDIT:

also, all the PG59IMG.zip files I made for people to flash recoveries, hboots, and so on in the dev reference sticky cannot be used by anyone S-ON because they fail the signature checks. My custom PG59IMG.zip files don't have an HTC signature which you must have for an S-ON device to load the PG59IMG.zip file.

...so there are a number of reasons why S-OFF is something to get.

Originally Posted by xzuhto

Well in that case this phone is right where I want it. I've never messed with kernels on any phone I've had previously nor have I messed with flashing radios. I just got done completing the steps and I'm now root along with CWM. Great work throwing this up for everyone.

You must flash a kernel if you want to flash an ICS ROM or any GB ROM with a modified kernel.

Also:

Here's a faster mirror, hopefully: http://www.4shared.com/zip/vVHQuid0/...OUS_15553.html

I see the downsides to s-on but I'm happy to have root and cwm. I will however be excited to get this thing fully unlocked. I won't be messing with custom roms till then. lol

Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using Tapatalk

I managed to host it on my Dropbox

Edit:
Oh sorry Lime, I didn't see that you were already hosting it...

this might deserve a sticky?