[HOWTO] Installing the unlocked bootloader and fixing broken recovery in leaked ICS

jm77 · Feb 28, 2012

Some of us used the flash-stock-then-flash-CWM method of installing the ICS leak, but were left without a working recovery. The method below allows you to unlock the bootloader and install a custom CWM.

This method may or may not work for you. I take NO CREDIT for making this happen, I'm just writing a quick howto. Thanks to strra for making it convenient.

Typically, attempting to boot into Recovery would generate an error that recovery image was not verified (something along those lines).

Thanks for all the devs who made this possible - you guys are amazing. Donate to them if you can, they deserve it.

I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY IF YOU TURN YOUR A500 INTO A PAPERWEIGHT.
If you don't feel comfortable with this possibility, stop here.

Install the A500 drivers from Acer on PC (from Acer's site).

Install and launch Android terminal app on tablet. Run the following command:

Code:

dmesg>/mnt/external_sd/dmesg.txt

Open up dmesg.txt and look for androidboot.serialno. That is your CPUID. In my case, the serial number reported by the OS, on the box, in the MicroSD slot was NOT my cpuid.

Use Vache's site to convert that number into your SBK (four long hex values).

Extract all of the required files (batch.rar and nvflash) from strra's post into c:\nvflash.

Open up a Windows command prompt (cmd.exe) and then `cd c:\nvflash`.
Launch `run.bat`, but don't enter your SBK yet.

Power down the tablet.

Use a paper clip and hold down the Reset button. Do not release it. Hold down power for 3 secs and then release it. After another second, remove the paper clip. Your Windows PC should then detect your device and install the APX driver. You should then have an APX USB device installed. If you do not have an APX USB device listed in your system tray, you cannot proceed.

Go back to the Windows command prompt and enter your SBK. Once you enter it, the process should begin. If you receive a USB write error, your SBK is incorrect.

Once the process begins, the Windows command prompt will read "Press any key when your A500 is in bootloader mode". Do not continue until the tablet is in Download Mode.

Once the tablet reads "download mode" (something along those lines), you are in bootloader mode. You can proceed and it will begin formatting the various partitions and installing the recovery.

Once the process completes, it should say PASS. You can then power off the tablet and power it back on again.

Make sure your tablet boots.
Power the tablet down and attempt to launch CWM via Power+VolDown.

PROTIP
Remount /system rw:

Code:

su
mount -o remount,rw -t ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p3 /system

theheathen · Feb 28, 2012

Worked perfectly! Thanks!

dadoreverend · Feb 29, 2012

yaw

worker for me too...

thanks to all for this work!

strra · Feb 29, 2012

good write-up

also, another protip:
if you right click the title bar of the command prompt, you can go to edit>paste to copy/paste the SBK... should make things a little easier

jm77 · Feb 29, 2012

@strra:

You don't happen to know the location of the apk's for `Acer Media` and `Weather`, do you?

I'd like to add them to the following list of bloat that can go (another PROTIP) once you remount /system rw.

Under /system/app, rename:

3DPhotoBrowser-apk
AcerNidus-apk
Clearfi-apk
aupeo-apk

Luescoff · Mar 1, 2012

Problem with recovery

When it launches download mode, it says entering download mode in acer boot screen and it stays like that. How much time should I wait until it enters download mode? Or is that download mode? When it shows PASS message then under appears a red text saying LNX image not certified or something like that, why? Please help me. Thanks.

Now my tablet boots with a white text on it saying custom bootloader. But i don't have recovery mode.

yaworski · Mar 1, 2012

Luescoff said:
Now my tablet boots with a white text on it saying custom bootloader. But i don't have recovery mode.

Install new recovery with fastboot. Boot into Android normally and connect it to PC with Android SDK (you need working adb and fastboot commands).

Check if adb sees your device:

Code:

adb devices

Boot into bootloader:

Code:

adb reboot bootloader

If you haven't been in bootloader mode before you might need to install fastboot drivers (from ACER Drivers for example).

Check if fastboot sees your device:

Code:

fastboot devices

My a500 didn't return its ID so fastboot is showing a device with "?" instead of ID. It is ok.

Install new recovery (here it is in recovery.img file, change it to yours):

Code:

fastboot erase recovery
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
fastboot reboot

When device will be booting just hold Volume Down like always to get into recovery.

You can also test and boot recovery.img directly from PC with fastboot:

Code:

fastboot boot recovery.img

You can test with fastboot boot command as it doesn't overwrite anything in device's flash. It downloads boot image (like recovery.img or boot.img into RAM and runs it from there).

erica_renee · Mar 2, 2012

jm77 said:
@strra:

You don't happen to know the location of the apk's for `Acer Media` and `Weather`, do you?

I'd like to add them to the following list of bloat that can go (another PROTIP) once you remount /system rw.

Under /system/app, rename:

3DPhotoBrowser-apk
AcerNidus-apk
Clearfi-apk
aupeo-apk

You can also add social Jogger
Link to facebook .
and all the links to there so called book shelf apps like link to games link to media .there are 4 of them They Hog resources even if you NEVER use them.I forget all there names and im on Vachs rom he has removed them all.

Skrilax_CZ · Mar 2, 2012

@jm77: Maybe could you split the DL link (batch.rar) and add the link to the OP of the orig. thread for downloading the bootloader binary (so when I update it people get the updated version directly)?

ATGAdmin · Mar 2, 2012

jm77 said:
@strra:

You don't happen to know the location of the apk's for `Acer Media` and `Weather`, do you?

.......

Acer hid them in flexrom/app this time around!

marv_in_lbc · Mar 3, 2012

Thanks for the help.

castafiore · Mar 3, 2012

yaworski said:
Install new recovery with fastboot. Boot into Android normally and connect it to PC with Android SDK (you need working adb and fastboot commands).

Check if adb sees your device:

Code:

adb devices

Boot into bootloader:

Code:

adb reboot bootloader

If you haven't been in bootloader mode before you might need to install fastboot drivers (from ACER Drivers for example).

Check if fastboot sees your device:

Code:

fastboot devices

My a500 didn't return its ID so fastboot is showing a device with "?" instead of ID. It is ok.

Install new recovery (here it is in recovery.img file, change it to yours):

Code:

fastboot erase recovery fastboot flash recovery recovery.img fastboot reboot

When device will be booting just hold Volume Down like always to get into recovery.

You can also test and boot recovery.img directly from PC with fastboot:

Code:

fastboot boot recovery.img

You can test with fastboot boot command as it doesn't overwrite anything in device's flash. It downloads boot image (like recovery.img or boot.img into RAM and runs it from there).

Thank you, yaworski

For a mysterious reason the only way to boot in CWM recovery mode on my a500 is passing by your last command

Code:

fastboot boot recovery.img

The classical "volume-/power" method brings me to the "dead android man" with the exclamation mark... Same thing if I use the "Acer recovery" app.
In others words, the only way to open the recovery is passing by the bootloader and the fastboot commands...

Any idea for the reason of that?

Euclid's Brother · Mar 3, 2012

So should the odmdata in the bat file be 0x300d8011 or 0xb00d8011. It has 0x300d8011, but i saw another post where it should match was EUU uses as 0xb00d8011.

Thanks.

strra · Mar 3, 2012

castafiore said:
Thank you, yaworski

For a mysterious reason the only way to boot in CWM recovery mode on my a500 is passing by your last command

Code:

fastboot boot recovery.img

The classical "volume-/power" method brings me to the "dead android man" with the exclamation mark... Same thing if I use the "Acer recovery" app.
In others words, the only way to open the recovery is passing by the bootloader and the fastboot commands...

Any idea for the reason of that?

it's because you didn't delete recovery-from-boot.p from /system and it's reflashing stock recovery whenever you boot into android

Euclid's Brother · Mar 3, 2012

I want to make a backup of my current EBT before I try flashing this new one. When I enter APX mode (reset button + power), I get "Acer Picasso USB Boot-recovery driver" listed in my device manager.

Then I issue the command (i blanked out most of my SBK here).

Code:

nvflash --read 4 myboot.img --sbk 0x8E000006 0x9C000001 0x22000002 0xF0000002 --sync

I've tried different flags like --bct --odmdate --configuration but i always get:

Code:

Nvflash started
rcm version 0X4
Command send failed (usb write failed)

Following that, the device dissappears from my windows device manager.

I've also tried the first command from run.bat with both odmdata values

Code:

nvflash --bct bct.bct --setbct --bl bootloader.bin --configfile flash.cfg --odmdata 0xb00d8011 --sbk 0x8E000006 0x9C000001 0x22000002 0xF0000002 --sync

nvflash --bct bct.bct --setbct --bl bootloader.bin --configfile flash.cfg --odmdata 0x300d8011 --sbk 0x8E000006 0x9C000001 0x22000002 0xF0000002 --sync

Both of these give the error message same message.

Any ideas?

---------- Post added at 01:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:11 PM ----------

Also, just tried the run.bat as is (well.. i removed the "cls" so the screen woudln't blank. Get the same error..

Code:

C:\Users\james\Downloads\bootloader>run
   ****************************************************************
   *        This will boot your A500 into bootloader mode,        *
   *   flash patched bootloader V2, and flash Thor Recovery 1.7   *
   ****************************************************************

   ****************************************************************
   *   Before executing, be sure to delete recovery-from-boot.p   *
   *          from /system to ensure recovery will stick          *
   ****************************************************************

   ****************************************
   *   Reboot your tablet into APX mode   *
   ****************************************

Generate your SBK with your CPUID from here : http://vache-android.com/v1/index.
php?site=sbk
Enter your SBK:0x8E000006 0x9C000001 0x22000002 0xF0000002

Loading bootloader...
Nvflash started
rcm version 0X4
[COLOR="Red"]Command send failed (usb write failed)
[/COLOR]   **********************************************************
   *   Press any key when your A500 is in bootloader mode   *
   **********************************************************
Press any key to continue . . .

castafiore · Mar 3, 2012

strra said:
it's because you didn't delete recovery-from-boot.p from /system and it's reflashing stock recovery whenever you boot into android

Thank you, strra.

I suspected it, to be honest, since I've noticed this advice when I launched the run.bat

But, my question has been/is still now: how to remove this "recovery-from-boot.p" ?

Can it be done when in APX mode? Do the adb commands work in APX mode?

yaworski · Mar 3, 2012

castafiore said:
Thank you, strra.

I suspected it, to be honest, since I've noticed this advice when I launched the run.bat

But, my question has been/is still now: how to remove this "recovery-from-boot.p" ?

Can it be done when in APX mode? Do the adb commands work in APX mode?

While in Android you need to remount your /system partition as writable and just delete the file with rm command

. If you didn't replaced your boot.img yet with patched one, just use

Code:

fastboot boot boot.img

command where boot.img is patched kernel, then wait until Android is started (it will run on patched kernel from ram like with recovery).

When you run on patched kernel and you use adb shell then you will have root from the beginning. Then just use

Code:

mount -o remount,rw /system

and you can remove the file.

castafiore · Mar 3, 2012

Thanks for your quick and clear answer, yaworski

Booting on this patched boot.img is the trick.

querobolo · Mar 4, 2012

fastboot boot recovery.img doesnt work for me, and i'm no able to mount rw to delete the recovery-from-boot.p. what can i do now??? i'm stuck in this leak version...

yaworski · Mar 4, 2012

querobolo said:
fastboot boot recovery.img doesnt work for me, and i'm no able to mount rw to delete the recovery-from-boot.p. what can i do now??? i'm stuck in this leak version...

Did you flash the patched bootloader in APX mode using nvflash? Because all above instructions work only on unlocked and patched bootloader with "secure" flag off.

[HOWTO] Installing the unlocked bootloader and fixing broken recovery in leaked ICS

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