The Noobs Guide to Installing a Custom Rom

This Guide assumes that you have S-off and are rooted. It gives the most basic instructions for a first time flasher, it'll also take you through a Nandroid back up using ClockworkMod v4.0.0.4.

Select a rom.

Choose from here or, click the LBC link in my sigi and download the excellent rom and put it in the root of your SD card.

Turn your phone off and just this once pull and refit the battery, just to be sure your not going to run into any problems getting into Hboot from a power on state.

Press and hold the volume down button and press the power/on button. Your now turning your phone on and entering Hboot (bootloader). You'll soon get a white screen with skateboarding types at the bottom. (Oh dear! Notice the one on the far right looks as if he is about to fall off his skateboard! This isn't important).

Wait for the green writing to flash on the screen and go away, any errors that you notice are completely NORMAL!

Press the volume down button once more to highlight RECOVERY.

Press the power button to select.

Your phone will Vibrate (or at least mine does), and after loading you'll get a black screen with purple writing.

Congratulations are in order! You've reached RECOVERY. At this point it might be useful to go outside and bark at the moon if the excitement overcomes you. It did me.

Better? Right lets get to work. This is the business end of flashing and what can't be done here can't be done at all. Well, OK actually there is Android Flasher, Fastboot Commander and lets not forget your Command Line Editor but we'll gloss over those until you've earn't your stripes.

Using the Vol button navigate to BACK UP AND RESTORE and Select using the Power button.

Select BACK UP.

Your now backing up your existing rom and creating your first Nandroid back up. Your Nandroid back up lives on your SD card and can be moved to another file for safe keeping, renamed, corrupted or deleted. If you value your information, keep it safe.

Once finished, you'll get the message "Backup complete!" All we've done to this point is back up the rom that you've been using, at this point you could hit the power button and continue using your old rom, or wipe your phone and falsh a fresh one.

Its important to remember here that if you are going to wipe your phone, your actually deleting HTC's stock rom off the phone and a factory reset will not undo this. After you have wiped, the only way to get your phone back to a factory condition is to flash (load) a stock rom back on, (RUU). You MUST wipe your phone before installing a new rom, there is no way around this.

Wiping and flashing a fresh rom is far more exciting than HTC's offering and that's why you S-offed and rooted anyway isn't it?! Here's how we do that.

Using the Vol button, highlight WIPE DATA/FACTORY RESET.

Once done, highlight WIPE CACHE PARTITION.


Normally this is enough for a normal reflash but if your recovering from a problem or an issue and want a really really good clean up, perform these optional steps:

Select MOUNTS AND STORAGE

Using your vol and power button:
format /cache
format /data
format /system
Select +++++Go Back+++++
Select Advanced
Wipe Dalvik Cache

Reboot Recovery. This step is quite important and your phone will as it says reboot, so don't worry, just let it do its thing.

Wipe Data/Factory Reset once more.

There that's all the wiping done. It's worth noting now that at this stage your phone now has no operating software installed on it! A little scary isn't it? Apart from a bootloader and a radio there's very little else on your pride and joy right now!!! YOU WIPED IT! OK, enough, lets get your new rom installed.




Select install zip from SD card.

choose zip from SD card.

Select your rom

In about 4 to 5 minutes the phone will tell you its done. (DO NOT INTERUPT THIS PROCESS), make sure you have at least 75% battery before you begin!

Are we done?

Now is the time to flash any non optional extras that your rom may need. For instance CyanogenMOD does not come with the Market or Google Apps in Update so flash them now. Refer to your rom developers page for further information on this.

Any kernels, keyboards or mods from the kitchen also get flashed here. These are a little more advanced so lets not go there right now.

Reboot system.

This is your roms intital install and always takes a while to complete. However if your waiting mor than 10 minutes at this stage consult your specific rom developers page.

Press the thanks button.

Done.

ems328i said:

Great guide, thanks very much. I have a question about radios when installing a custom rom.

I see that some of the custom roms do not have a radio. How do I know which radio to use to go with that rom? Many rom threads don't seem to specify. Do I leave my stock one, or do I need a different one?

Also, if I do decide to install a custom kernal at a later time, does that mean re-installing the custom rom again first?

Thanks very much for any help for a noob to android!

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Don't flash a radio unless you really need to, its not necessary, if your phone works perfectly well with the radio you have my advice is; leave well alone and use the stock radio.


Any add ons such as kernels can be flashed any time after a rom flash and there is no no to reflash a rom just for a fresh kernel etc. Just go back into recovery and flash the exta's, don't wipe.

What I would advise though is when installing any new rom is not to flash any extras until the rom has been running as a stand alone for about 30 minutes. Any, shall we say "toys," Themes and a lot of Kitchen baked stuff should be flashed after the rom has run alone a while and settled, this makes it far easier to understand any issues your fresh rom may have as its easier to identify what's causing it.

This is a bit of a minefield though because some roms need add ons for the first flash, such as CyanogenMod needs the Market and Gmail. Stuff like A2SD scripts also need to be flashed prior to the first boot or they wont work. Your rom Developer should be specific about these.

ems328i said:

Is it possible to now remove some apps like Facebook from this rom?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I use Titanium Back Up to freeze the apps before deleting. That way if I get too naughty and freeze something that's needed it can be restored.

pumpernickel77 said:

I dont think this question was answered clearly enough Can you restore your phone back exactly the way it was before with the nandroid back up you made? If not what is the point of the back up?

Also, it it best to do a nandroid back up the way you described or would it be just as good to let the ROM manager App do it for you?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Nandroid Backup (to be honest - a tiny piece of Googling would give you the answer to this) but, in answer to your question, yes, a Nandroid backup takes the phone state back to effectively when the backup was was taken....I use it often when testing ROMS and then returning to my daily use ROM.

The only thing that isn't backed up by the backup and therefore isn't restored is your Radio so if you change version you need to flash the older version (which I'm sure that you'll be advised not to!) to return to the same state you were in.

ROM Manager nandroid and manual recovery nandroid are the same, it's just a matter of choice and personal preference. Some people like command line other like GUI. However, using recovery based backup it means that you'll hopefully have a slightly greater understaing of what is actually happening and the options that are avialiable to you, which means should there ever come a time when only recovery is accessible - you won't cr@p your pants!