[SOLVED]This is probably a stupid question, why is Visionary unsafe?

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But why does NO ONE trust visionary to root? I'm always seeing posts about how people are getting stuck mid-root, but they're using another root program. I used the temproot-permroot method back in november and it worked out just dandy.

Did I miss something? Should I be worried XD?

Sent from my Liquid Metal using XDA Premium App

Originally Posted by ohshootrawr

But why does NO ONE trust visionary to root? I'm always seeing posts about how people are getting stuck mid-root, but they're using another root program. I used the temproot-permroot method back in november and it worked out just dandy.

Did I miss something? Should I be worried XD?

Sent from my Liquid Metal using XDA Premium App

I used visionary few week back, rooted my phone just fine. S off and everything works great.

If you get stuck in a boot loop its your own fault.

There were reports of the "Attempt permroot" function in the app failing, especially after applying the G2 OTA or if their phone came with it pre-installed (and it's uncertain whether or not the app was updated to properly support the OTA). After it failed, the phone would be in an unknown state (sometimes stuck on the HTC screen, sometimes in a bootloop, sometimes unable to temproot anymore, etc.). A lot of the time, once the phone was in this state, other methods of rooting wouldn't work as is. What made the problem worse was that if you had the OTA installed, you couldn't use the shipping ROM to restore completely back to stock and start over without at least having temproot to downgrade your version number.

That's why people tend to not trust Visionary anymore. Once reports came out of it being hit or miss, it became more prudent to recommend the other methods that were at least more easily recoverable from if something messed up. That being said, I don't think there is a problem with it if you are only using the temproot function. I just wouldn't recommend anyone hitting the permroot button anymore when safer methods exist.

I wouldn't say "no one trusts" Visionary. Seems that some people are still using it, and advocating it. But many on here are warning against Visionary (and recommend rage), as there have been a good number of "semi bricks" caused by Visionary. If you use Visionary and it works, than you're fine. If not, well of course you are not fine

This guide describes a bit how Visionary is not as clean/safe as rage:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=843014

And its discussed thoroughly on this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=872988

Personally, I used Visionary right around the time where people started saying it was unsafe (mid-December), so I actually was unaware of the risk. I didn't have any problems rooting.

BTW, a lot of us have stupid questions that we ask on here all the time. That's pretty much what this whole subforum is about. So it makes the thread more useful if you title it more specifically. Such as "[Q] Trusting root with Visionary" or something like that.

Originally Posted by ianmcquinn

There were reports of the "Attempt permroot" function in the app failing, especially after applying the G2 OTA or if their phone came with it pre-installed (and it's uncertain whether or not the app was updated to properly support the OTA). After it failed, the phone would be in an unknown state (sometimes stuck on the HTC screen, sometimes in a bootloop, sometimes unable to temproot anymore, etc.). A lot of the time, once the phone was in this state, other methods of rooting wouldn't work as is. What made the problem worse was that if you had the OTA installed, you couldn't use the shipping ROM to restore completely back to stock and start over without at least having temproot to downgrade your version number.

That's why people tend to not trust Visionary anymore. Once reports came out of it being hit or miss, it became more prudent to recommend the other methods that were at least more easily recoverable from if something messed up. That being said, I don't think there is a problem with it if you are only using the temproot function. I just wouldn't recommend anyone hitting the permroot button anymore when safer methods exist.

That's a really good summary regarding Visionary and the OTA update, which I was not completely aware of. I rooted using Visionary before the OTA, so didn't keep completely up to date on the issue.

My first G2 I tried to use VISIONary, was able to temproot, but couldn't permroot, and as mentioned above, it left me in a state where the phone was fine (booted and all) but I couldn't permroot using any other method. This was so early on, none of the methods to undo the damage from VISIONary were known yet, so I had to return it to the store (just told them it was randomly rebooting) and get another one. Used the rage method with zero issues, and been running fine ever since (this was all in November).

I'm no noob to tinkering with phones, either. Had a Nexus One before and was on Symbian for years, also used WinMo previously with all the registry hacks and whatnot.

The very first thing I did when I got my G2 was research what methods work best when rooting and I went with rage, which is what I recommend people do. You still have the option of pushing gfree into the phone.