Database Info

Rooted my EVO and now I'm lost....

I don't know anything about this programming. I am a complete idiot when it comes to this stuff. I rooted the phone because I wanted to be have full control over it's capabilities going forward, but I didn't realize I'd need to use these programs on my computer to do it. I thought things would be available through simple downloads.
Anyway, I've spent the last several hours attempting to become at least functional so that I could install another OS on my phone. I have no idea what rebooting in recovery or clearing caches or any of this is. I know it's probably simple, remedial stuff to practically everyone reading this but I am clueless.
I'm sure I could learn and was willing to do so. I downloaded SDK and Java update and Eclipse and painstakingly followed installation instructions several times from several sources. And I can't get the adb to function. My computer won't recognize the path. I'm pretty certain that I've installed everything completely and updated the path accurately, etc. I go through cmd, type in adb and it says it's not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
I've gotten to the point where I just want to set my phone back to the way it was when I bought it 2 days ago. I want to go back to being a simple lemming and just oblivious to this whole world. I don't belong over here. I'm out of my league and I know it.
Now the problem I have is that it's supposedly easy to "unroot" the phone. You just have to download 3 things and "flash" them. I don't even know what the **** that means though. And if it invloves using adb (or abd...I don't even know that), then I'm screwed.
I'm really frustrated guys. I'm tired. I should have never attempted this, but it all sounded so easy and awesome. Now I just want my normal, restricted phone back. Can anyone help me?

OK. I got the phone back to it's original state. I know some of you are probably shaking your heads at the decision, but it makes me feel a lot more comfortable.
Maybe if I could figure out how to access adb, it would be different but I just felt handcuffed without it. Well there eventually be ROMs that are more easily installed like re-installing the original was? Will there be ways to just steam it through HTC Sync?

i think one reason why u didnt manage to get adb working is because u didnt set up the environmental variables for java. Go into command prompt and type java. See what that returns.

SupremeBeaver said:
i think one reason why u didnt manage to get adb working is because u didnt set up the environmental variables for java. Go into command prompt and type java. See what that returns.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the response. That command produced a long string of information. Is there something in that I should be looking for, or was this just a test to see if it would be recognized?

it was a test to see if java was working fine. By string of commands do u mean like this:
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/8440/48798806.jpg
Otherwise the problem may be that you havent specified the environmental variables for the android sdk.
Right click on My Computer and go to properties, under the Advanced tab, hit the Environment Variables button, and in the dialog that comes up, double-click on Path (under System Variables). Now what u need to do is add the location of ur sdk to the end of the "Variable Value".
So if u put the adroid sdk folder in the root of ur C drive, then u would add this line
;C:\Android\tools
to the end of the Variable Value line. This depends on where u put the skd folder though. Whats important here is u dont replace whats already there! Just add the line to the end, even the ";" symbol.
Hope this helps. let me know how it goes

Thank you again for the response. Yes, that looks to be the same screen information that appears when I run java in command.
I have the SDK in a folder named AndroidSDK on the root of my C drive. I have added the line ";C:\AndroidSDK\tools" to the end of the path. One thing I just realized is that when I double click the AndroidSDK folder, the next screen contains a single folder named "android-sdk-windows". When I double click that folder I see subfolders for add-ons, platforms, tools, SDK readme, and SDK setup. I'm wondering now if I need to include that "android-sdk-windows" in the path line in order for it to find adb in the tools.
I would really like to solve this adb issue. I still want to learn enough about this stuff to root the phone again and feel comfortable working with it. I'm completely obsessed with this right now. It's driving me mad.

in that case the line you should add would be
;C:\AndroidSDK\android-sdk-windows\tools

I can't believe it was that simple!
Actually I can believe it. Thank you so much for your help. Sorry if I came off as a bit of a drama queen in the OP, but I have just spent about 6 hours messing with this if you include the rooting.
Ok. I think I'm going to give it all another shot. Thanks again. I may be back to this thread again if I end up running into another dead end though.

Glad it worked
Dont worry about it, i can understand ur frustration because this is by no means straight forward.
Hope u enjoy playing with ur soon to be rooted EVO

If you have time to answer another question, I went through the OTA Simple Root process again and everything appears to have worked. But I don't think that finishes the phone in root. I don't have a Superuser app, for instance.
Isn't there something else I need to do? (Install a custom rom maybe?)
If so, how do I accomplish it in the least technical way possible?

Im not too sure with that actually. I dont have an EVO (or any android phone for that matter). But yeah i think the superuser app should appear without flashing a custom rom.
I think you might want to create a thread in the EVO section where im sure many EVO owners will help u out with this. Or maybe a mod could move this thread?

JelloB said:
If you have time to answer another question, I went through the OTA Simple Root process again and everything appears to have worked. But I don't think that finishes the phone in root. I don't have a Superuser app, for instance.
Isn't there something else I need to do? (Install a custom rom maybe?)
If so, how do I accomplish it in the least technical way possible?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Disclaimer - I have not used the simple root method.
That being said I have helped a few people with this and it seems that the last img file that it flashes does not have super user access. You need to flash a custom ROM in order to fix that. I will post a link to the thread that I was helping in and that should answer some of your questions on how to do that.
Hope that helps
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=722194
Sent via the Sprint HTC EVO

Just wanted to update this. I finally was able to put it all together. I was previously unaware of the "extras" tab on the OTASimpleRoot program. Just didn't read the instructions in post well enough, which is the story of my life....but I digress.
Anyway, I was able to root the phone again, flash recovery and now I have even gotten to the point where I understand a little bit how to install custom roms. In fact, I just installed my first using Baked Snacks latest update. I've also downloaded ROM manager so in the future I should I have no trouble at all (even though I'm pretty comfortable doing it the "long" way now).
Thanks again to both of the guys above who took the time to read and respond to a complete newbies questions.
I now that I have successfully loaded a custom ROM onto my EVO that it is full root and I don't have to worry about that anymore. I don't have a "superuser" app that I can tell, but I do have a "dev tools" app and folders which I don't think were on the phone before.

Alright, I do have a superuser permissions app. When I click it nothing happens though. I don't know if that's normal or not.
The issue I'm having now is that when the phone was rooted it took it back to the 1.17.651.1 software version. I went through the steps in the "How to start over: Fully rooted stock 1.47..." thread but the phone doesn't appear to be reading the PC36IMG.zip file. It doesn't ask if I want to update it. I tried it a couple times and then skipped to the second file in that thread (su-2.1-e-unsecure-signed.zip) and got a message about ....something "build". Went ahead with the install but I don't see anything different. Still says I'm on software 1.17.....

Wireless tethering app doesn't work for me, which was the impetus to dig further into this....deeper down the rabbit hole.

Ok. This will be my last update but I'm pretty excited because something has happened to correct issues I was having.
I thought I would go through the root process from start to see if I could get the 1.47 software. Once I got to the second step and did the factory reset, upon reboot it took me to the recovery screen which was different and made me a little nervous. I found the cue to install BakedSnack again from the sdcard and chose that function.
This time things were different than before. For instance, upon booting the phone I got a cool screen saver with streaming, trippy colors instead of the 4G and Sprint crystaline logos. I don't remember this happening the first time I installed this ROM. Once I got into the phone I noticed some minor changes I didn't notice the first time. The music widget wasn't on the second page, nor the nascar or football crap either. I think they were there before. Then I went into apps and saw ROM manager installed and superuser and Wifi tethering. Went straight to wifi tethering and low and behold it works like a charm.
Last but least, I went to check the software and I am now running 1.47. I don't know why it's on their now. This is all still a little mysterious to me. I could swear this Baked ROM is a little different than the first time I had it on the phone. Maybe that's my imigination. Maybe the factory wipe did something. I don't know but I'm very happy now.

Congrats

SupremeBeaver said:
Congrats
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks again man!
What a difference 24 hours can make. At this point last night I was ready to pull my hair out in frustration. By noon today I had unrooted the phone and re-installed the most recent OTA software update and was ready to just stick with that. Now I have re-rooted, somehow managed to get the updated software back on the phone, and have installed and am running an incredibly awesome custom ROM.
I love my new phone. Thanks again to both of you guys who offered help. I think I'm going to be good from here on.

[Q] WHY can't you delete preinstalled apps?

Hi folks,
As you can tell from the title I'm a smartphone noob and didn't realise you couldn't do this (see the amount of people I've spoke to who didn't even notice you can't delete apps that come with the phone! What's with that?).
But as you can see I emphasised the 'why', 'cause I've searched everywhere but can't find a reason as to why. I'd assume it was just so you can't delete bloatware, but even the Nexus that runs on stock Android has the same issue.
Does anyone know why (or guess why) you can't delete preinstalled apps?
Thanks!

If your device is rooted, all you have to do is download Root Explorer from the market and delete the APK files from the system.
They're located in: /system/app/
You have to press "Mount R/W" on the top right of the application before you can read and write. Make sure hit "Mount R/O" in the same spot after you're done editing though. Also, make sure that what you're deleting isn't something you need and you should probably back-up the .APK files to be safe. If you mess up and don't back up, you can still just re-flash or re-download GAPPS without a problem. Have fun .

Thanks
I was thinking about rooting my phone actually, I'll check that out (I'm sooooo going to back up everything lol).
But! The question was WHY you can't delete the preinstalled apps. Does anyone know the reasoning behind it?

You're welcome mate .
Just for safety I suppose. And you should definitely root your phone, it'll open a whole new world for you!

manufacturer /operator agreements...

tmpchr said:
manufacturer /operator agreements...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That and basically without rooting your phone it's basically like a comps guest profile. A lot less can mess up if you can't play around with certain files/settings.

Makes sense.
Thanks folks

I am also unhappy that i cannot uninstall apps that came with the phone and i have yet to find a good reason as to why not. most of the apps i want to delete are free on the market, already compatible with my phone and can be deleted or uninstalled without causing any major issues.
tmpchr says "manufacturer /operator agreements..."
ok ill buy that, sounds like a good business opportunity, (i would do it) good advertising, shared/reduced costs...etc. but the end user should still have the option to remove.

I totally agree with you guys, at the very beginning I had so big apps installed on my device (motorola xt720), for instance MotoNav was about 1.5 GB and spoiled my battery life. Luckily I discovered how to root the device and now, using "root uninstaller" that you find in the market, all of them are just a memory

You could also use Titanium Backup to remove programs.

What's the most straightforward means to remove the bloat?

In the developer forum for the Sensation I see a bazillion different threads for temporarily rooting the phone and getting rid of bloat, but none of it is permenant. I never had a problem simply deleting .apks through ADB to remove the lesser amount of bloat that was on my Nexus One and I'm assuming the process wouldn't be much different here, but I'm not sure what method to use.
Has anyone successfully DELETED the bloatware apps on their Sensation? I don't want to kill stuff like the launcher or the Sense UI, but I'd like to remove all the T-Mobile garbage (minus the Wifi calling), the games, the extra HTC stuff, and the social networking apps.
I tried searching throughout the Sensation forums and didn't really find any concise threads, but if this specific topic has been covered, feel free to point me in the right direction and close this thread.

If you actually read anything over there you would know that you can't delete anything with temp root. You can only disable the bloat (known as "freezing" with Titanium Backup). Use the adb commands to disable the packages you want or use the Viper tool to disable a ton of bloat easily.

the bloatware cant really be removed till full root is achieved

And now that perm root has been achieved...
...delete the apk files from the system/app directory to get rid of bloat.

doesnt work that way. you can royally screw your phone doing so. please do research before moving forward.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1167420
&
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1162116

RiverCity.45 said:
...delete the apk files from the system/app directory to get rid of bloat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If anything, I just rename files I don't want anymore. eg - system.apk = system.apk1
They don't run and don't show up in the apps anymore and if it messes something up, I can just rename them back.

[Q] Creating A Custom ROM?

I heard its fairly easy to customize a stock ROM with little to no coding (I don't know anything but visual basic). Even though i have heard this i have no idea on how to do it. Could someone point me to instructions or explain to me how its done? Youtube has not helped be either. The ROM would be based off of the Infuse 4G Stock (at least for my first one).

noahk11 said:
I heard its fairly easy to customize a stock ROM with little to no coding (I don't know anything but visual basic). Even though i have heard this i have no idea on how to do it. Could someone point me to instructions or explain to me how its done? Youtube has not helped be either. The ROM would be based off of the Infuse 4G Stock (at least for my first one).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
depends on what you need to do, porting from device to device may need some coding (unless it is from a galaxy s to an infuse or other similar devices where you can swap samsung libs) app editing is java and can sometimes be done with smali/baksmali or apk tool but you can still theme with nothing but an archive type program (7zip or similar) also you can move apps around or delete bloat. there are different ways to go about it certain things.
the best way i think is to setup adb with the phone functional. then you can root and adb into the phone and pull apps, theme/edit and then push the apps back to the phone. this makes it much easier to find problems and debug since ther eis no flashing and you do changes one at a time. you could also ssh into the phone over wifi.
do you just want to do this for personal use or share what you have done? cwm packages will need some scripting skills and you will possibly have to make new simlinks and fix permissions.
basically the perminant apps are all in /system/app. the framework apps are in /system/framework
/system/app/systemUI.apk is the app responsible for the notification bar and most of the other themeing is in /system/framework/framework-res.apk and /system/framework/twframework-res.apk all i can say is google around and if you see something you want to do look for a tutorial on the subject.

Dani897 said:
depends on what you need to do, porting from device to device may need some coding (unless it is from a galaxy s to an infuse or other similar devices where you can swap samsung libs) app editing is java and can sometimes be done with smali/baksmali or apk tool but you can still theme with nothing but an archive type program (7zip or similar) also you can move apps around or delete bloat. there are different ways to go about it certain things.
the best way i think is to setup adb with the phone functional. then you can root and adb into the phone and pull apps, theme/edit and then push the apps back to the phone. this makes it much easier to find problems and debug since ther eis no flashing and you do changes one at a time. you could also ssh into the phone over wifi.
do you just want to do this for personal use or share what you have done? cwm packages will need some scripting skills and you will possibly have to make new simlinks and fix permissions.
basically the perminant apps are all in /system/app. the framework apps are in /system/framework
/system/app/systemUI.apk is the app responsible for the notification bar and most of the other themeing is in /system/framework/framework-res.apk and /system/framework/twframework-res.apk all i can say is google around and if you see something you want to do look for a tutorial on the subject.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Id prefer to share what i've done. Id like to go into simple rom development.

[Q] Native Apps

There is some way to remove the native apps from my rooted razr maxx hd?

braianh said:
There is some way to remove the native apps from my rooted razr maxx hd?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, however it is much better to freeze the app. You can use Titanium Backup to do that https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keramidas.TitaniumBackup&hl=en
When you freeze it, under the default setting of Titanium Backup, it will still get updates and remain frozen (won't be used by the system or be in the app drawer or on the home screens). This is much safer than removing it because if the phone misbehaves you can always unfreeze the app as well. There's no real reason to remove the app by deleting it.
If you do want to delete it, then native apps live in the /system/app/ folder, which is mounted as a read only filesystem. Since you are rooted, you can remount it so that you can read and write to the folder and delete the app, however that said, its much better to simply rename the app. I haven't renamed apps in the system folder on this phone (just got it) but have on the Samsung SGS II, which is a much safer phone to play around with like this from the look of it so far, though.
Every app on a stock install has two files, one with a .apk file extention and one with and .odex file extention. From experience with the other Android phone, you can just rename something to, for example, videoplayer.apk.backup and videoplayer.odex.backup. It can be renamed back later if you need to. You want a file browser that will remount the filesystem so that its rewritable. Root Explorer is what I've used but there's plenty of others that are gaining in popularity. It can be done at the command line as well.
All of the above said, though, you really, really, really, want to make sure that you aren't freezing or deleting or renaming an app like this that will interfere with your ability to undo it. If you do something that gets the phone stuck with lots of things crashing and making the phone unresponsive, or worse unbootable, then that's a very bad situation. It was always really easy to deal with from the recovery screen on my SGS II but I haven't yet tried things out on my RAZR HD in this fashion and things are differant when it comes to it. I haven't tried much out yet.
Also, and I really don't want to come off as being rude, and I hate it when people do on this forum, but because you had to ask if it was possible on a rooted phone at all sort of indicates that you might want to get as much advice about what you want to freeze or delete before doing it. Its prudent on any phone and less is more until you've gathered more information; and from the amount of support on this phone's section (low number of people having the phone and tinkering at this point) of the forum my guess is that this it will take some time and patients to get all the answers and information that you want before going balls deep.
Good luck, and remember that less is more, and that support will grow over time.

If you delete you will have a difficult time taking the next OTA. Freeze them. There is almost no space to be had by removing them.