S-Off for Verizon HTC One (M8)
To anyone with a Verizon M8 device who might be struggling with performing S-Off, you may find this info helpful.
As you may already know, Verizon has blocked HTC from allowing you to unlock their M8 phones. I did not expect this, and if I had known, I probably would not have dropped such a considerable chunk of $$$ on this phone. I was beyond frustrated.
Though there is currently an exploit for the Verizon phones, I foolishly allowed my phone to do an OTA update, and I suspect this may have made this task a little more challenging for me.
At the bottom of this post, I've attached a link to my dropbox that has all of the files I needed to do this.
First, make certain that you have done the following to your phone: 1) Disable your lock screen completely; 2) Disable FastBoot; and 3) Enable USB Debugging. Google how to enable USB debugging if you can't find it.
1) Install the HTC drivers on your PC from folder 1. I don't know why, but don't install HTC Sync, just get the drivers.
2) Don't bother with the HTC Unlocking files from folder 2, as they don't work for Verizon devices
3)Download and install the WeakSauce app from Folder 3 directly to your phone. It's an actual apk file that will give you temporary root access. Each time you reboot your phone, it will take about 30-45 seconds for root to install. Also, BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT YOU INSTALL SUPERUSER SU and grant permissions to everything that pops up!!
3a) Download ES File Explorer from the market. Upon starting the app, make certain that you do the following:
A) Grant Super User permission to the ES File Explorer app.
B) - - VERY IMPORTANT!!! - - Find the menu, and enable 'Root Explorer' and 'Show Hidden Files'
C) READ CAREFULLY: If it doesn't already exist, you're going to need to create a 'local/temp' folder in the 'data' folder of the ABSOLUTE ROOT FOLDER of the device. You will NOT find the correct 'data' folder if you do not enable 'root explorer' and 'hidden files.' There are numerous 'data' folders in your phone, but you need the one in the absolute root. In ES File Explorer, you can click on the top, and it will progressively advance 'up' one folder each time you click it. Keep clicking until you see 'Device.' Once you are there, you will see 3 options under 'History." There should be:
"/Device"
"0 (x.xx GB/x.xx GB)"
"extSdCard (xx.xx GB/xx.xx GB)
4) Open the "/Device" folder, and find (or create) the folder named 'Local.' Open that folder, and find (or create) the folder named 'tmp.' Upload the 'firewater' file from Folder 4 of my Dropbox link.
For the previous step, I want to emphasize that for some reason, I absolutely could not push the 'firewater' file to my phone via adb as directed in the tutorials I found out there. I don't know if it had anything to do with the OTA that I downloaded, but everytime I would try pushing the file, the phone would disconnect from my PC, and upon reconnecting, it was gone. Also, the way I uploaded 'firewater' into that folder was by 'exporting' the file from my Dropbox to that folder. I expect there are other options, but that is what worked for me.
5) Download the adb fastboot files from Folder 5 and save them to your PC. Then, on your PC, open the command prompt via 'Run as Administrator, and navigate to the folder that you saved them to. Run the following commands:
A)
adb shell
B)
chmod 755 /data/local/tmp/firewater
- - IMPORTANT: You will need to watch your phone upon executing the NEXT command.
- - Your phone will ask for Super User permissions, and you will need to grant them.
C)
su
D)
/data/local/tmp/firewater
At this point, you should be able to sit back and watch it do it's work.
I make absolutely no guarantees if this will work for you, but after hours of fiddling with the instructions that are currently out there, this is the only thing that I could get to work for me. I tried to be as thorough as possible with this process, but if anyone notices something that I missed, or if this post needs to be tweaked (or deleted??), please PM me, and I will update it.
www.dropbox.com/sh/40mqrnvcbgljdta/AADdGYgmnOla055xe7lqPmHXa
Thanks go out to the following people:
- YouTube User: "Rootjunky.com"
- YouTube User: "DroidModderX"
- JCASE
- Beaups
Though their existing instructions out there did not directly work for my device, the info they provided is what gave me the proper direction to figure out how to get S-Off on my Verizon M8 with the latest OTA update.