how to root lenovo vibe k5 note ?

[atf2m4]

Oh. Is it possible to flash only the recovery file through that ?
I'm not exactly familiar with that method, will look it up

Brother, any progress in rooting the device?. pls. let us know.

 

[anujmankotia]

Brother, any progress in rooting the device?. pls. let us know.

No bro no progress....

 

[comprocks]

Trying out SP Flash Tool. Root may be in sight!

Guys, I'm trying out the SP Flash Tool for the recoveries given by @Romeotamizh in this thread and @Gibz97 in the Mediatek 64 bit rooting and custom recovery thread.

I'm having trouble with the Flash Tool as you'll see in that thread. Read through pages 19 and 20 to catch up on the situation. You can also check out the links that I've posted at the end of this message to read the messages we have exchanged. We'll be moving the discussion here since it is basically about rooting the K5 Note. It will also help you guys to check out the progress of the flashing/rooting.

Hope the OP @miningpiky does not mind.

Catch up on the discussion here:
Post #174 | Post #176 | Post #187 | Post #188 | Post #189 | Post #191 | Post #192 | Post #193 | Post #194

---------- Post added at 02:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:28 PM ----------

First open device manager and look at how the device pops up while you're connecting the phone to the PC during flashing in order to rule out a drivers issue.

The phone pops up under ports as 'MediaTek PreLoader VCOM USB Port (COMx)' where x is a number between 3 and 5 depending on the port I connect it to. No yellow exclamation triangle and going to the Properties window shows that 'The device is working properly.'

Then secondly try using other mt6755 scatter files from Lenovo.

I have tried other scatter files. Two, to be exact and they are from different versions of the Stock ROM and they both have the same size, down to the bytes. I hope that there must be some way to flash it.

If it still can't flash then it could be the locked bootloader restricting the flash or maybe even a locked/secure preloader, a problem that would be impossible to counter

Does this mean that you won't be able to downgrade back to Lollipop either? If that is the case, then somebody has done it in this thread itself. So, it might be something else.

Hoping we can find out a solution to this nightmare. I am yet to try out the recovery given by Romeotamizh. I'll update this when I do. Thanks!

 

[hk.happy]

Ok, so I tried flashing the recovery file. This is what i did
Downloaded stock rom from here https://yadi.sk/d/AxEP_CSXu7niP, the a7020a48_s259_160721 version. I downloaded this to get the scatter file. Otherwise my phone was already on A7020a48_s312_161128 row version.

Using SP flash tool, loaded the scatter file from the stock rom folder, unchecked everything except recovery, chose the custom twrp recovery from above (renamed to "recovery") , chose download option, clicked on download button, and connected my switched off phone to the computer. It connected, loaded the recovery, flashed it, green tick and all. I was excited. Now i disconnected the phone and rebooted.

Problems started here. Phone was stuck in boot logo with some error message in bottom left corner (dl failed or something like that, dont remember exactly)

I did not panic and tried to reflash the stock recovery from the stock rom. However that started giving some error. (Something like BROM ERROR status sec imghdr type mismatch)
Then I somehow managed to flash the ENTIRE stock rom that i had downloaded, the 160721 one after several failed tries.

Rebooted the phone.

Now I didn't have the IMEI numbers and my sims won't register in the network.

Some research on google and xda led me to a software called mau meta, with which i managed to restore my IMEI numbers after several tries.

End result is that I'm now on 160721 version of the ROW, compared to earlier 161121, with no success in installing a custom recovery.

I read somewhere in k3 note forums that to install a custom recovery in marshmallow, we need patched boot images or something like that. Anyone can shed light on that ?

 

[anujmankotia]

Same here bro...

The whole cycle
Ending up with lost imei no. And then reflashing them....
Using Maui meta

 

[comprocks]

I read somewhere in k3 note forums that to install a custom recovery in marshmallow, we need patched boot images or something like that. Anyone can shed light on that ?

I think it's posted previously on one of the threads. Our boot image has some sort of image verification since Marshmallow. It verifies the recovery and possibly all other partitions before allowing it to start up. Since you had a different recovery than stock, it could not verify it and that's probably what stopped the boot process. I have no clue where we can find a modified boot image, though.

 

[anujmankotia]

But I recently unpacked the system.IMG and repacked it with certain alterations

It worked like a charm


Looks like only some images (recovery.IMG etc) have verification method of some kind...

---------- Post added at 10:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:33 AM ----------

May the size issue...
Stock recovery is about 13 MB.....

 

[comprocks]

But I recently unpacked the system.IMG and repacked it with certain alterations
It worked like a charm
Looks like only some images (recovery.IMG etc) have verification method of some kind...
---------- Post added at 10:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:33 AM ----------
May the size issue...
Stock recovery is about 13 MB.....

Sounds about right. Lenovo just doesn't want their users to root their phone! Can you help me out with my issue in the above thread or try the recovery that was posted in the Mediatek thread (Link) if that works for you?

 

[anujmankotia]

Already tried that both of them


An image mismatch error for me

 

[comprocks]

Already tried that both of them
An image mismatch error for me

Back to square one.... I'm going to root it through the Lollipop+Kingoroot method.

 

[anujmankotia]

Can you please do me a favor

If you are able to install a custom recovery in lollipop

And then (if u wish) upgrade to mm then flash the firmware by unchecking the recovery image.......


Thanks in advance...

 

[hk.happy]

This is just sad. A device perfectly capable of running nougat is stuck on marshmallow probably because Lenovo wants us to buy their pricier moto models. (Or some other reason; the 10 reasons they give on their forums are not enough to convince me to not root my phone)
This sucks. This is MY device, i should be able to install whatever software I want on it, even root it.
I hope some kind developer here figures out how to do that soon.
*****End of rant*****

PS : I managed to restore my IMEI numbers but now there is a new wifi showing up in available networks as "NVRAM WARNING: ERR=0x10"
Also, serial number in settings>about phone>status shows up as 00000000. I don't remember if it showed a number earlier same as the one on my box. Tried googling, but its a bit complicated,involving apdb files, which are not available for the s312 version of ROW, which I've already updated to, again. Anyone with the same issue ?

 

[comprocks]

This is just sad. A device perfectly capable of running nougat is stuck on marshmallow probably because Lenovo wants us to buy their pricier moto models. (Or some other reason; the 10 reasons they give on their forums are not enough to convince me to not root my phone)
This sucks. This is MY device, i should be able to install whatever software I want on it, even root it.
I hope some kind developer here figures out how to do that soon.
*****End of rant*****

So true!! I wanted to run Xposed on this. But it is not possible without rooting or some form of custom recovery. This is absolute crap. They should give us the freedom to root even if this phone is not highly priced.

 

[anujmankotia]

Me

 

[comprocks]

Can you please do me a favor

If you are able to install a custom recovery in lollipop

And then (if u wish) upgrade to mm then flash the firmware by unchecking the recovery image.......


Thanks in advance...

Sure bro, I will try this out. I have both stock ROMs so I will give it a shot. But I think the Marshmallow boot image will still stop the boot process once I upgrade by not flashing the stock recovery.

 

[Gibz97]

@comprocks, @hk.happy Just chimed in the thread and I have realized that some people were able to downgrade their firmware to Lollipop, How did they do that? Was it done with SP Flash Tool or maybe there's a specific Lenovo flash tool?
About people losing there IMEI and Serial numbers, if this was due to SP Flash Tool then to avoid it you have to flash the firmware in "Firmware Upgrade" and not "Format All+download"
There is a thread here on how to recover IMEI,SN and Nvram wifi issues. it's for HTC Desire 820s but should work for any 64 bit mtk phone and you should use the database files found in your firmware folder
https://forum.xda-developers.com/desire-820/help/desire-820s-how-to-root-invalid-t3281455

 

[Yahii2]

I cannot wait to root android 6 too, I think we will win

 

[hk.happy]

@comprocks, @hk.happy Just chimed in the thread and I have realized that some people were able to downgrade their firmware to Lollipop, How did they do that? Was it done with SP Flash Tool or maybe there's a specific Lenovo flash tool?
About people losing there IMEI and Serial numbers, if this was due to SP Flash Tool then to avoid it you have to flash the firmware in "Firmware Upgrade" and not "Format All+download"
There is a thread here on how to recover IMEI,SN and Nvram wifi issues. it's for HTC Desire 820s but should work for any 64 bit mtk phone and you should use the database files found in your firmware folder
https://forum.xda-developers.com/desire-820/help/desire-820s-how-to-root-invalid-t3281455

As far as I know, there is no official Lenovo flash tool. Whoever managed to downgrade, that was with SP flash tool most probably. I'm waiting for @comprocks to try what he mentioned in his last post, since I don't have the lollipop ROW and neither the bandwidth to download that file today

Yeah I was a bit hasty and used the flash all option instead of the firmware upgrade one, hence the imei and sn problem.
To rectify the serial number, I was trying to download the SN tool from your link, it asks for a decryption key, but didn't see one mentioned in the thread, maybe you added the key later on... What's the key mate ?

 

[anujmankotia]

No u can easily downgrade to lollipop using SP flash tool
U just need to perform format+download 2 times

---------- Post added at 01:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:16 PM ----------

1st time u will get a pl vry fali error
But 2nd time it will flash succesfully

---------- Post added at 01:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:17 PM ----------

And the imei can be re flashed using Maui meta

---------- Post added at 01:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:18 PM ----------

U can do one more thing
Download CDs information.apk

Now unpack system.img
Now place that apk inside the app folder
And repack system.img
Flash it
And when done

Dial the code for engineering mode than cds information and all that

 

[Gibz97]

As far as I know, there is no official Lenovo flash tool. Whoever managed to downgrade, that was with SP flash tool most probably. I'm waiting for @comprocks to try what he mentioned in his last post, since I don't have the lollipop ROW and neither the bandwidth to download that file today

Yeah I was a bit hasty and used the flash all option instead of the firmware upgrade one, hence the imei and sn problem.
To rectify the serial number, I was trying to download the SN tool from your link, it asks for a decryption key, but didn't see one mentioned in the thread, maybe you added the key later on... What's the key mate ?

My bad! My mega account had changed the decryption key and I forgot to update the thread.
Here's the link to SN Write Tool https://mega.nz/#!lxcBWKIZ!1SZVDXoLhlswY24OFFBzowHUN-wHBYPOXOhgoSIshB4