[Q] Reversible Rooting Method for 4.5.91 - Atrix 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Alright, so over the last few weeks my phone has developed touchscreen issues, with large parts of the screen now not registering touches. The phone is very close to unusable and I plan to have it exchanged on warranty. HOWEVER, I was rooted back on Froyo (I lost root access with the Gingerbread update) and now I'm stuck with Superuser as a system app (unremovable). I need root access to remove SU, but I haven't been able to find whether or not rooting via .zip flash is reversible or not. I need an answer on whether or not it is, and if so, how.
Also, I'm not simply flashing back to stock because I've heard rumors that the phone keeps track of how many flashes it recieves. How credible is this?
Thanks for any help!

Chairsofter1138 said:
Alright, so over the last few weeks my phone has developed touchscreen issues, with large parts of the screen now not registering touches. The phone is very close to unusable and I plan to have it exchanged on warranty. HOWEVER, I was rooted back on Froyo (I lost root access with the Gingerbread update) and now I'm stuck with Superuser as a system app (unremovable). I need root access to remove SU, but I haven't been able to find whether or not rooting via .zip flash is reversible or not. I need an answer on whether or not it is, and if so, how.
Also, I'm not simply flashing back to stock because I've heard rumors that the phone keeps track of how many flashes it recieves. How credible is this?
Thanks for any help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it is reversable download root uninstaller from the market if you are worried about it. me personally i have returned about 4 rooted phones ony to have them fixed and updated when sent back.
dont worry about it, its not unlocked so no harm done

Related

Is there any way to root now without voiding warranty?

I saw that the XDA team had rooted the new software, so I went ahead and did an upgrade via my PC instead of over the air. Now that I've started researching the root methods it looks like all of them void your warranty, so if your phone dies (and lets be honest phones do die often on their own accord), you will be stuck buying a brand new phone.
I like the new software, but there are tools I use that need root such as titanium backup, and settings profiles (for gps scripting). Will there ever be a root going forward that won't break your warranty?
vmlinuxz said:
I saw that the XDA team had rooted the new software, so I went ahead and did an upgrade via my PC instead of over the air. Now that I've started researching the root methods it looks like all of them void your warranty, so if your phone dies (and lets be honest phones do die often on their own accord), you will be stuck buying a brand new phone.
I like the new software, but there are tools I use that need root such as titanium backup, and settings profiles (for gps scripting). Will there ever be a root going forward that won't break your warranty?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no, the act of rooting voids your warranty not the method. How hard motorola actually tries to determine if your phone is rooted is another matter though especially if something is making your phone disfunctional.
Warranty is not a tangible item that is "broken." It is a legal agreement. By rooting your phone, you are exposing the delicate inner workings to possible breaking. However, since the manufacturer doesn't see what happens to the phone and it stops working, you can generally at least partially restore it, hiding the fact it was rooted. Is your warranty still void? Technically yes. However, the manufacturer doesnt know. Further, Although it is possible to break your phone, you will never have any trouble as long as you follow these guidelines:
- Avoid rooting phones with the OTA 2.3.4
- DO NOT FLASH SBF TO OTA 2.3.4 ATRIX. IT WILL BREAK FOR GOOD
- Read all instructions
- Make sure all mods are for YOUR specific version of the OS
- Backup with CWM before every mod.
- Lastly, insure that the phone battery is fully charged before doing any flashing. This will avoid the possibility that your phone will get bricked and then run out if battery b4 u can fix it (bricked phones do not charge).
- Aside from that, as long as u do not have OTA gingerbread 2.3.4 on your phone, don't freak out if u brick your phone. I have done it 9 times in the past month and everytime managed to restore it with RSD Lite.
Finally: IF YOU DON'T HAVE GINGERBREAD 2.3.4 OTA DO NOT UPGRADE VIA THE OTA UPDATE. USE THE FRUIT CAKE METHOD OR YOU MAY BRICK YOUR PHONE NEXT TIME THAT YOU ROOT/UNLOCK IT.
Sent from my Atrix using XDA App
Excellent replies. That makes sense, I just didn't realize it was a legal issue more than technical.
Another quick question. If I used the Motorola PC upgrade to 2.3.4 is it still considered an OTA update since I downloaded the stock from Motorola and upgraded it via PC?
Sun3vi1 said:
- Avoid rooting phones with the OTA 2.3.4
Finally: IF YOU DON'T HAVE GINGERBREAD 2.3.4 OTA DO NOT UPGRADE VIA THE OTA UPDATE. USE THE FRUIT CAKE METHOD OR YOU MAY BRICK YOUR PHONE NEXT TIME THAT YOU ROOT/UNLOCK IT.
Sent from my Atrix using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Huh? you can root just fine with the OTA 2.3.4 using the preinstall method. Works perfectly. If you OTA'd to 2.3.4 you don't ever want to attempt to flash back down to a previous version. You can still root and unlock the phone even with OTA 2.3.4.
The only thing that using the OTA breaks is being able to SBF to previous builds. But you can still use pudding to unlock and use other roms including froyo ones with pudding built in.
I highly doubt it is illegal to root. Where did you hear this?
Google doesn't charge to license Android, and it's their license, AFAIK individual companies cannot do what they want with this license. It remains open source software that anyone can develop for. It's based on Linux/Unix.
Does anyone here even know what rooting does? It is the act of re-enabling the Superuser. A right EVERY Linux distribution should have. Phone or not.
nexxusty said:
I highly doubt it is illegal to root. Where did you hear this?
Google doesn't charge to license Android, and it's their license, AFAIK individual companies cannot do what they want with this license. It remains open source software that anyone can develop for. It's based on Linux/Unix.
Does anyone here even know what rooting does? It is the act of re-enabling the Superuser. A right EVERY Linux distribution should have. Phone or not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sun3vi1 said "the warranty is a legal agreement". It says that if your phone breaks within a certain period of time they'll replace it, *provided* you haven't modified it in any way. Rooting may or may not be legal in your jurisdiction, but either way it voids the warranty by modifying the phone.
If you only root in a method that allows you to unroot easily enough, there's no problem. Since rooting is not a particularly invasive set of changes, unrooting should not be difficult.

[Q] Unrooting issues? (screw up while previous unrooting?)

Greetings,
I know the easy answer to this is going to be to flash a new rom, but if I wanted to do that I would have already. I'd rather find and repair the source of the issue and learn from it.
That being said, shortly after getting my tbolt (when they were first released) I used the revolutionary root and added in VPN software for work. Being unaware that OTA updates hadn't been blocked during the rooting, the phone took an update and went into a death-boot-loop. I found a clean updated OTA rom, flashed and unrooted the phone as the VPN software didn't work well for what I intended anyway.
Great, now the phone is all back to stock (or so I thought).. After a while, another OTA update came down, it asked to update, I allowed, and it said update failed.. Repeat ad nauseum for the next several weeks. Since I was happy with the way the phone was operating, I didn't care if it got the updates or not.
So last week, I decided that since the phone is out of warranty anyway, I might as well root and get rid of some of the bloat, and while I'm at it, get rid of the damn nag screen every tine I hook it to a computer. Searched around, found thunderbolt tool 1.0.1, downed it and tried it out, and it proceeded to say unable to lock my phone.
After a little screwing around, the "update status" on the phone itself reports ROM Version: 2.11.605.9, while the tool was getting a response of 2.11.605.5, so it was using the wrong method to get into the phone. So I edited the batch file to use the .9 method no matter what it reported back, and it proceeded to root, add the recovery, and superuser.
Ahhh, life is good, the phone is rooted again, time to start doing my own customization.
Except that after a couple reboots, everything loses the root rights.
Running titanium backup says "asking for root rights" and then "titanium has been granted superuser permissions" but it just hangs there at the "asking for root rights" screen.
Wireless tether similar story... Start the app and it says "press to start tethering" and touching the screen gets "wireless tethering has been granted superuser permissions", then hangs at "please wait while starting".
Won't do anything that requires root, unless I run the tool again and select "S-off but no root", and it will go through a procedure and root will work again for a while.
Also, as I'm typing this, I discovered that it doesn't necessarily require rebooting to lose root. I had root working last night, but when I picked up the phone to get the proper messages to type, it is not showing root again, and it hasn't been rebooted since root was working.
Thoughts on how to repair this without flashing a rom?
Have you attempted to run the "fix permissions" option in your recovery?
If that does not help, You could use something like OTA RootKeeper to protect root, if you loose it you would just click one button to get it back.
Last thing I can think of is to just reflash the same ROM you are using now on top of what you have so you loose no data and any messed up settings or files will be rewrote.
**edit**
You should really think about installing a custom ROM, because until you do, or you block OTA updates, this will be a reoccurring issue.
You could easily install a stock rooted ROM of the exact same thing you have now. nothing would change except it would be properly rooted and OTA updates would be blocked.
That is because only temp root is applied to the official 605.19 Ruu. You need to downgrade back to 605.5 after getting temp root on the 605.19 Ruu then apply the perm root zip in recovery and then flash a newer rom from recovery. If that doesn't work don't lose hope. I may be misunderstanding the situation you have but it sounds like you're only applying temp root. The tool doesn't need to be edited and you may need to flash the 605.19 stock Ruu, relock and s on and then run the tool again.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk 2
Milimbar said:
Have you attempted to run the "fix permissions" option in your recovery?
If that does not help, You could use something like -edit- to protect root, if you loose it you would just click one button to get it back.
Last thing I can think of is to just reflash the same ROM you are using now on top of what you have so you loose no data and any messed up settings or files will be rewrote.
**edit**
You should really think about installing a custom ROM, because until you do, or you block OTA updates, this will be a reoccurring issue.
You could easily install a stock rooted ROM of the exact same thing you have now. nothing would change except it would be properly rooted and OTA updates would be blocked.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Haven't seen the fix permissions option anywhere I've been, care to point me in the right direction?
I'll check out the rootkeeper.
disconnecktie said:
That is because only temp root is applied to the official 605.19 Ruu. You need to downgrade back to 605.5 after getting temp root on the 605.19 Ruu then apply the perm root zip in recovery and then flash a newer rom from recovery. If that doesn't work don't lose hope. I may be misunderstanding the situation you have but it sounds like you're only applying temp root. The tool doesn't need to be edited and you may need to flash the 605.19 stock Ruu, relock and s on and then run the tool again.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never took the .19 update, and both the tool and phone report as .05 now. (if I remember correctly the .09 reverts back to .05 to get in)
damm315er said:
Haven't seen the fix permissions option anywhere I've been, care to point me in the right direction?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What recovery are you using?
I only use 4ext and would recommend that.
The fix permissions will take up to 5 min and may not help your particular issue, but shouldn't hurt to try.
If 4ext - Boot into recovery, select tools then select fix permissions.
If CWM I think its in the advanced menu.
and If TWRP I think it is in the advanced menu again.
Good luck and listen to the others here, they go out of their way to help people a lot
Ok earlier I misread your post. I thought it said 605.19. Still though something you're doing is causing you to only get temp root. Reread the op of the allinone tool and make sure you meet the requirements before you start it. That away when you run it this time you are in the best possible situation for it to work. Trter is very helpful and if you post your issue in his thread he will probably assist you with anything you need.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk 2
I remember having a similar problem about 6-7 months ago.
I would randomly loose root, though not as often as he is describing.
In my case it was a combination of an outdated root method and a flawed ROM.
If everything he is using is current, including the ROM, he shouldn't have an issue.
If it were me I would flash Santod's stock deodexed ROM and be done with it.
It is the stock ROM with nothing changed except it is prerooted.
I understand that you would like to "fix" this issue without flashing a ROM, however the ROM itself could be the problem. this solution is the simplest I can think of.
Using everything from the thunderbolt toolkit, so yes, 4ext.
Found and ran the fix permissions, ran for 15 minutes before it finished so we'll see how it goes.
I get what you're saying about the rom being screwed up, and am starting to think my only choice is to reflash it, so I'll start looking into a new rom.. That being said I'm still pursuing fixing this until I find a rom that serves my purpose.
Is there a good stable ICS for thunderbolt, pre-loaded with root and good battery life?
Yea the one in the post above yours. If you want something a that is faster and has better battery than it then head over to infectedrom.com and check out all the different options santod has made.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk 2

[Q] Randomly lost root access

I recently got s-off, updated from 1.15 to 2.06, installed abp and also flashed a no ads zip file for good measure because some ads would still get through. Everything was going great until the phone randomly froze. I held down the power button and rebooted into recovery and cleared my cache and dalvik cache, thinking that may have been the problem. Upon rebooting after that, I come to find out I've lost my root access. This is so weird. I am still s-off and have the 2222222 confirmation shown when I am in the bootloader, I still have super user installed, but when I run an app that needs root, such as adaway, it says I don't have root. I downloaded root checker and it confirmed that I didn't have root. I don't understand how this could have happened. Is there anyway to regain root? I have been having the worst luck with this phone :\
terrorist96 said:
I recently got s-off, updated from 1.15 to 2.06, installed abp and also flashed a no ads zip file for good measure because some ads would still get through. Everything was going great until the phone randomly froze. I held down the power button and rebooted into recovery and cleared my cache and dalvik cache, thinking that may have been the problem. Upon rebooting after that, I come to find out I've lost my root access. This is so weird. I am still s-off and have the 2222222 confirmation shown when I am in the bootloader, I still have super user installed, but when I run an app that needs root, such as adaway, it says I don't have root. I downloaded root checker and it confirmed that I didn't have root. I don't understand how this could have happened. Is there anyway to regain root? I have been having the worst luck with this phone :\
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Send me a PM if you want me to help you out. You need to install a custom recovery and use that to install a rooted rom and kernel. It can be a stock rooted rom. Or mostly stock however you want to do it, I'll help you set it up and teach you some things along the way.
I can teach you all kinds of things via team viewer, it wont take long and it's a necessity for having a rooted phone in my opinion. I know it can be frustrating and over whelming but it will get better I promise.
Oh and also you don't need to worry about losing s off. It's at a much lower level than anything you've mentioned touching. So it will always be there regardless because you definitely don't want to be messing with hboots or s off type stuff.
Hey, I PMed you.
Try uninstalling superuser and installing either supersu or the other superuser.
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using xda app-developers app
I can't uninstall my Superuser unless I use Titanium Backup. I tried installing SuperSU (while still having my original Superuser installed) and the SuperSU said that "There is no SU binary installed"
terrorist96 said:
I can't uninstall my Superuser unless I use Titanium Backup. I tried installing SuperSU (while still having my original Superuser installed) and the SuperSU said that "There is no SU binary installed"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got your PM. I'll pick your brain about the ideal setup for your needs and how you use the DNA via gtalk. Then we'll make a plan of attack and you can update the thread with your solutions opinions etc.
As long as your opinion of me is good. Otherwise, it's prohibited. I have a green title and seniority rules
HTC EVO CyanogenMod Cant use BEATS AUDIO
CharliesTheMan said:
Send me a PM if you want me to help you out. You need to install a custom recovery and use that to install a rooted rom and kernel. It can be a stock rooted rom. Or mostly stock however you want to do it, I'll help you set it up and teach you some things along the way.
I can teach you all kinds of things via team viewer, it wont take long and it's a necessity for having a rooted phone in my opinion. I know it can be frustrating and over whelming but it will get better I promise.
Oh and also you don't need to worry about losing s off. It's at a much lower level than anything you've mentioned touching. So it will always be there regardless because you definitely don't want to be messing with hboots or s off type stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I need help with rooting my HTC EVO to stock or CyanogenMod. With CyanogenMod my phone will not play audio/BEATS or will not open
PLAYSTORE.
How to get root back after subsequent apps are denied root?
Over the last year, this has happened several times while having different custom roms installed. It happened several times with my Galaxy S4 and S5, and recently with my Galaxy Tab S 10.5. I have not lost root on my Nexus 7 (2013). The common denominator appears to be the Samsung devices.
Through SuperSu, I have removed root, rebooted, and installed root again with CF-Root which has not given me root access.
The only way I have been able to recover to date is to do a factory rest. It is interesting to note that I would have thought that the factory rest would take me back to the Samsung rom but in the last two time that I did this on either device, I ended up with the custom rom that I just had but without root or custom recovery.
To go back to a Samsung rom, I would think that if I started the device in download mode and did a flash with odin.
But rather than go through this, is there a reason why this happens and/or is there a way to avoid it?
Lastly, is there a true way of getting root back once it stops granting root?
cyaclone said:
How to get root back after subsequent apps are denied root?
Over the last year, this has happened several times while having different custom roms installed. It happened several times with my Galaxy S4 and S5, and recently with my Galaxy Tab S 10.5. I have not lost root on my Nexus 7 (2013). The common denominator appears to be the Samsung devices.
Through SuperSu, I have removed root, rebooted, and installed root again with CF-Root which has not given me root access.
The only way I have been able to recover to date is to do a factory rest. It is interesting to note that I would have thought that the factory rest would take me back to the Samsung rom but in the last two time that I did this on either device, I ended up with the custom rom that I just had but without root or custom recovery.
To go back to a Samsung rom, I would think that if I started the device in download mode and did a flash with odin.
But rather than go through this, is there a reason why this happens and/or is there a way to avoid it?
Lastly, is there a true way of getting root back once it stops granting root?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Best to post such things in your device specific forum.
This forum is for the Droid DNA.
However, gaining root is as simple as downloading the latest SuperSu zip and flashing it in recovery.
Very simple to do on any rom.

[Q] Lock icon on boot and system is detecting custom firmware

Hey Guys,
I own a Samsung Galaxy S4 from Verizon and have followed the guide on how to root it posted on the forums. For a while things were good. My phone booted up with the correct loading screen and my device detected that I was on an official kernel. Now for reasons I'm not sure of, my phone is saying that the kernel is custom and the lock icon has returned when I restart or cold boot my phone. I'm not running custom firm ware, I'm running a stock Verizion kernel. I tried to delete SuperUser, but it isn't installed. My binaries for SuperSU are up-to-date. I'm still rooted, but I would like to get rid of the unlock icon when I boot up and I would like to get the system to recognize that this is an official kernel.
Also ES File Explorer is unable to mount r/w privilages on my phone in order to delete busybox and su so that I could try to re-root the phone again. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!!
Theres no way so far to get rid of it. Mine actually goes back and for between custom and official all the time. Maybe when the bootloader gets unlocked it will do away with it, but until then it does no harm. So if you want to root, that's the price we pay.
sneekerpimpz said:
Theres no way so far to get rid of it. Mine actually goes back and for between custom and official all the time. Maybe when the bootloader gets unlocked it will do away with it, but until then it does no harm. So if you want to root, that's the price we pay.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most of the time mine is gone. Maybe once a week I might see it.
sneekerpimpz said:
Theres no way so far to get rid of it. Mine actually goes back and for between custom and official all the time. Maybe when the bootloader gets unlocked it will do away with it, but until then it does no harm. So if you want to root, that's the price we pay.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So I managed to get rid of it. I'm not sure if it's permanent, but here's what I did. I couldn't delete the stuff in the root directory (and this was before I found solid explorer which has better root access programming than es does). So I did a factory reset and found that that worked for a while, but then I noticed that downloading Triangle Away seemed to be causing the problem because the lock icon returned after I installed it and gave it root access. So I deleted it and chose the 'unroot' option from the list of options in supersu. Then I re-rooted the phone using the guide. Now the lock icon hasn't returned, and the device status under the about phone menu says that my firmware is the official one. Another thing I noticed is that I'm running an older version of busybox (version 1.17.1 I think, as installed by motochopper).
Again I'm not sure what I did differently, or changed as a result of my method, but it seems to have worked. Perhaps someone with more development knowledge can let me know what's happened for my own personal information.

Re-enabling OTAs after Knox trip?

Hey everyone. I decided I would unlock my bootloader and trip Knox about two days before towelroot came out. Yay.
I've since gotten the OPO, so I wasn't that concerned. I wanted to give the phone to my mom who lives in another state, so I Odin'ed back to what I believe is the most current OEM firmware available (NK2) because I want my mom to be able to get updates OTA and not have to worry about troubleshooting her phone as much as if it were a custom ROM, or a phone with root.
Unfortunately, checking for a system update says the system is modified (ROM is all stock though) and device status is custom. I also discovered while testing the phone (it had been sitting in a drawer for months) that the microphone isn't working very well. I tried different sims, calling different people on different networks, I'm sure it's hardware problem. Is there any way to re-enable the OTAs? I'd like to get this hardware problem warrantied. The knox tripping didn't destroy the mic, so please no judgement here. I'm also not comfortable in removing the glass to replace the mic. If the mic could be replaced without that step, I would simply do that.
Thank you.
rockingondrums said:
Hey everyone. I decided I would unlock my bootloader and trip Knox about two days before towelroot came out. Yay.
I've since gotten the OPO, so I wasn't that concerned. I wanted to give the phone to my mom who lives in another state, so I Odin'ed back to what I believe is the most current OEM firmware available (NK2) because I want my mom to be able to get updates OTA and not have to worry about troubleshooting her phone as much as if it were a custom ROM, or a phone with root.
Unfortunately, checking for a system update says the system is modified (ROM is all stock though) and device status is custom. I also discovered while testing the phone (it had been sitting in a drawer for months) that the microphone isn't working very well. I tried different sims, calling different people on different networks, I'm sure it's hardware problem. Is there any way to re-enable the OTAs? I'd like to get this hardware problem warrantied. The knox tripping didn't destroy the mic, so please no judgement here. I'm also not comfortable in removing the glass to replace the mic. If the mic could be replaced without that step, I would simply do that.
Thank you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm. Last time I Odined back to stock, using the tar file of the firmware version that came before NK2, my device was totally fine to receive OTA, despite Knox being tripped. Try removing root first, then Odin stock NK2, then factory reset.
Hm, so I now need to install SuperSU in order to use the un rooting function? I would've thought a full stock image file would've eliminated root...
EDIT - Simple Root checker says SuperSU is not installed BUT terminal app "does Rooted".
Installed SuperSU, but binary is not installed, so it doesn't run. WTH? What happened to the good old days of just flashing stock images and not worrying about it anymore?
SOLVED
I looked at the slightly outdated stock collection thread, flashed the NG4 stock image, then was able to take the OTA update to NK2. Went ahead and told T-Mobile the whole problem and they really only seemed to care if there was physical damage or water damage (which there is not).
Just leaving this here for future searches. How do I get this thread closed?

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