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Very often I find myself needing to reset or get around someone's Windows Password, the easiest way of course is with one of many available linux boot cd's that'll edit the windows system hive. However most of the time I'm not carrying this around, I have a USB stick that can be used but I noticed earlier that while my Nexus One was plugged into the USB port on boot it is detected by my bios.
So the question is - Can the android USB interface act as a boot device? If so I assume it'd need a different partition since it's already got an OS?
Anyway just an idea
(Also while I have your attention: 1) Did they ever fix the +1 area code problems with contacts?, 2) Why don't half my contacts show up in Send MMS dialogue (and others)?, 3) How do I tell if I have an SLCD or AMOLED screen cos sometimes the screen looks really crappy (dithering or off colour banding) AND FINALLY 4) can you set notification sounds differently depending on time of day (ie; I don't want a new gmail alert to wake me up at 2am).
THANKS!
Yes it can. Follow the many instructions to make your storage card into a bootable device. Then insert it into your phone. It all works the same.
Ahh, sorry to resurrect an old thread. Figured it would be better than starting a new one.
I've searched on and off for a few months and came to the conclusion this is not possible. If it is, please point us in the right direction.
Case in point. I have a 16gb microsd in my phone partitioned with 256mb swap, 1gb ext3 and the rest fat32. In a sd card reader it boots the live distro I have on the card on the fat32 partition (along with the rest of my android stuff, side by side). I put the same card in the phone and it is no longer seen as a bootable usb. I've tried this using the disk drive mode in neophyte's latest rom, nextsense, and the mount usb option in clockworkmod. It seems the phone doesn't allow the mbr to be read...
So, once again, I don't mean to start a yes it is, no it's not, etc... But if you are able to point us in the right direction it would be much appreciated. I had all but given up on this.
Thanks
warriorcookie said:
Ahh, sorry to resurrect an old thread. Figured it would be better than starting a new one.
I've searched on and off for a few months and came to the conclusion this is not possible. If it is, please point us in the right direction.
Case in point. I have a 16gb microsd in my phone partitioned with 256mb swap, 1gb ext3 and the rest fat32. In a sd card reader it boots the live distro I have on the card on the fat32 partition (along with the rest of my android stuff, side by side). I put the same card in the phone and it is no longer seen as a bootable usb. I've tried this using the disk drive mode in neophyte's latest rom, nextsense, and the mount usb option in clockworkmod. It seems the phone doesn't allow the mbr to be read...
So, once again, I don't mean to start a yes it is, no it's not, etc... But if you are able to point us in the right direction it would be much appreciated. I had all but given up on this.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any luck. I find myself needing 2 of these presently. The increase in mobile repairs I am doing in combination of the normal in the dark windows users I need multiple OSs to get the job done by blunt thirty. If I find anything ill post....
And to OP even though its 2 years old. Windows password bypass can be achomplished simply by hard rebooting a computer during load animation. Select safe mode apon reboot. Sign into admin, reset pass, then PROFIT. At first I thought they fixed it in 8 but just takes an exra step. Pop the bios battery after force shutdown before reboot. Windows security is about as meaning as army intelligence.
Questions or Problems Should Not Be Posted in the Development Forum
Please Post in the Correct Forums & Read the Forum Rules
Moving to Q&A
I have just recently (5 hours ago) purchased a 16GB Tablet, that I had them repartition at the store, which has version 1.4.2.
I've spent the last few hours reading this forum and watching videos and now know WAY more than I ever intended to know about this tablet.
Rooting, dual OP, CM7, CM9, ROM, R3, Restore, etc. etc.
Due to so many warnings I've read about, I'm a little afraid to mess things up.
All I really want to do is install games I already have on my computer to the NT.
There were a couple of threads talking about this, but they were dealing with version 1.4.1. Not 1.4.2. I don't know how much of a difference there is.
Can someone suggest the best way to install these games?
Thanks for all the info you guys provide. It was hours of very informative reading.
i'm pretty sure games need memory ( storage ) and lots of it. tell us how much of the microhcsd you have available. did they leave you with one or six and a half gig ?
Unless you have an android computer/tablet with games from the play store or some other android market, the "games" you are referring to are not as easily transferable to an android tablet like the nook. The games have to be rewritten/redesigned for the android OS.
As for many of the warnings you've read, they are mostly to protect the person writing the guide. I.e. if you somehow manage to not follow directions and screw something up horribly, they want not responsibility for your mistakes. Honestly, 90% of them time in my experience with Android tinkering, Occam's razor holds true: the simplest answer is usually the right answer. And in terms of Android tinkering, that answer is user error.
So if you can read and follow directions and do a bit of troubleshooting here and there, you will be just fine.
My advice? Start with a bootable CM7 sd card. Go from there.
My apologies for lack of info.
After repartition, I was left with 5.91GB for B&N, and 8.00GB Other storage, plus 16GB SD Card.
Regarding games. All the games I want to use are all apk android games that I had from another android product.
Cubanluke88
The Bootable CM7 SD Card will boot from the card and leave the Tablet's OS alone? Is that correct? I guess this is where I'm confused. I think I read too much.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Rooting your device is like removing the old OS and replacing it with a new one?
Booting from CM7 SD Card will boot from the cards OS leaving the original OS on the device?
On one of the video's I watched, it was said "DO NOT FLASH ON THE 16GB Nook". I don't even know what that means, but I'll look it up and see if I can find out.
Thanks so much for helping a newbie who still doesn't know the terminology. I'll concentrate on reading about booting from CM7 SD Card.
Alright I'll try to address most of your confusion.
The bootable SD card essentially means you will not touch the current internal OS. You basically burn an image of CM7 to the card and when that card is inserted, the Nook will boot into CM7 instead of the B&N Android OS.
Rooting does not necessarily mean changing the internal OS. Because the B&N OS is Android based, and because Android is linux based, "root" is sort of the equivalent of administrative access on a Windows machine. It simply means you have full control of the device. Rooting the nook means the OS stays intact, but you can install the play store (Android market) and do all sorts of other things you are otherwise locked out of.
"Flash" is simply a techy way of saying install. When someone says "flash CM7 over the internal OS" they mean that you are installing CM7 (the custom version of Android that has been built) over the internal OS.
The safest thing for you is to create the bootable SD card of CM7 as it does not touch the internal OS. However, you can also create a bootable sd card for the custom recovery. From this custom recovery, you could then "flash" (install) CM7, CM9, or one of the other roms (custom OS) for the Nook tablet. It is also in this custom recovery that you can make a "nandroid backup" which is basically images of how your nook exists in its present form.
I know thats a lot of info. But honestly, before diving into this stuff, people should try to understand as much of that as possible. There are tons of resources out there that explain this stuff. Again, I suggest the bootable CM7 sd card as its the least likely to screw up. However, remember that should you go after the internal stuff, this thing is incredibly difficult to brick. Any mistake you make has likely already been made before and recovered from. So if something goes awry, don't panic.
Thats a lot of words. Damn.
It may have been a lot of words, but you've answered all of my questions and then some. I thank you very much for taking the time. This information helps tremendously and also makes so much more sense of what I read already.
Thanks Again.
That post deserved a thank. Really good description.
Sent from my R800x
We have started a very good community here, keep up people.
I should add one more thing.
Should you ever decide to go internal, i.e. flashing over the B&N OS, which IMO is the better way, its incredibly easy to return the device back to stock conditions should you ever need to (i.e. for warranty purposes or something).
I've done it myself just to make sure that its possible. And it is. Very easily.
I just wanted to come back and say Thank you!!
I was able to created the Bootable CM7 sd card and it went flawlessly.
I still have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm having fun looking around.
Thanks to this group of wonderful people, especially Cubanluke88m who still take the time to help even the virginal newbies who don't even know the lingo.
My hats off to this forum.
In the future I may in fact do this all internally, but I guess I needed to do it this way first just to see if I could. Now I feel much more comfortable with the files, burning images, etc. then before.
Congrats, enjoy.
The next thing I would recommend doing: make a clockwork mod recovery bootable card and make a nandroid backup of the internal OS.
ok, will do. I will search for those now.
I do have a couple questions that I have searched for but I think I'm using the wrong search terms and not the correct lingo.
When I partitioned the sd card there was a tutorial for opening the card so you could use the rest of the memory, but it was for Linux? I've tried to search how to do this on PC, but again the lingo problem.
Also I have books and apps that I'd like to copy over, but do I have to put them in a certain directory on the SD Card, or do I still have access to the units directory.
I know these are stupid questions, I just don't know the right words to search for. Sorry about that. I know I can search for the two things you told me to do and they will probably come up. lol
Thanks again for all your help.
Netti2nite said:
ok, will do. I will search for those now.
I do have a couple questions that I have searched for but I think I'm using the wrong search terms and not the correct lingo.
When I partitioned the sd card there was a tutorial for opening the card so you could use the rest of the memory, but it was for Linux? I've tried to search how to do this on PC, but again the lingo problem.
Also I have books and apps that I'd like to copy over, but do I have to put them in a certain directory on the SD Card, or do I still have access to the units directory.
I know these are stupid questions, I just don't know the right words to search for. Sorry about that. I know I can search for the two things you told me to do and they will probably come up. lol
Thanks again for all your help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's fine, it's always better to ask first. Could save you a lot of trouble in the long run. Unlike lots of other users, you seem like you are willing to search and learn things which is always good!
You can regain the remainder of the storage after writing the CM7 .img to your SD card. To do this in Windows, you'll need to download and install either MiniTool Partition Wizard or EASEUS Partition Master. I usually use Partition Wizard.
Unfortunately, while using the CM7 SD ROM, you won't have access to your apps and books from the stock ROM, so you'll want to transfer them to your storage inside the SD ROM. So I recommend copying the files to your computer, then connect your NT running the SD ROM. From there just copy the files to your SD card.
With nvflash it was easy to just modify the partition layout and size with nvflash.cfg, is there anything that a non-developer like me can do with Odin to mimic that ease of use?
IE, I easily pass 2GB of Apps (Games, Programs, work stuff, you name it) hence my question and issue I am currently facing.
I have a 32GB MicroSD card and I would like to at least TRY and get it setup like my Asus Transformer is, IE all of the phones Internal storage dedicated to applications, and the external, my MicroSD to videos/music/extra app-data. (oh and the REAL SDCard is mounted as /sdcard, I hate the way they do it now, when I do to /sdcard I want to be ON MY SDCARD!)
Is this something I can do, or must someone with even a fraction of Developer knowledge (IE not me) have to set this up prior? (If so, it probably means its a bust question I guess)
FTR: My want would eliminate the "USB Storage" seen in the Storage screen when you look in settings, and I am ok with that)
EDIT: I found some threads about the .pit file, but it all seems quite a bit out-dated (for devices prior that didnt split apps/media) and missing bits and pieces that would make it truly useful for a non-dev like me... will keep digging however...
Hi all
I have a Samsung S20 Ultra with a memory card that all of my photos are saved to, unfortunately I had to take my phone into Samsung experience store for a screen / back cover repair, the staff removed my Memory card and told me to factory reset due to GDPR as the device had to be sent away, when my device returned in the post 5 days later I went to put the memory card back in and a notice appeared stating the memory card is encrypted to a different device! I am totally devastated as there are pictures of my father who has passed away and other images that they are the only copies I have, I know now I should have unencrypted the memory card before the factory reset. I have spoken to Samsung directly so say there is nothing that can be done.
does anyone know of a way I can get round this I would be so very grateful!
Thanks in advanced
Stu
The best thing I could suggest is a third party solution that may be able to decrypt the information on the card, such as FeExplorer. Check to see if you have a "Decrypt SD card" option in the Lock Screen and Security settings, although I suspect it won't be able to do it.
The problem is, the encryption key is unique and stored in user data. When data is wiped during a factory reset, the key is wiped as well, so even if the user configures the same lock settings (password, pattern, etc) they key would be different.
I am not aware of an absolute solution, but here is what I would strongly suggest you do:
If able, make sure the contents of the card are backed up. Use cloud storage such as Google Drive.
Keep the card in a safe place; maybe put it in a small envelope or something, and mark it in such a way as to discourage accidental discarding or wiping.
Buy a new SD card to use in the meantime while you look for a way to recover the information on the encrypted card.
I am sorry for your loss, and I wish I had a better answer for you.
Edit: Found this on another site, maybe it's worth a try. MAKE SURE YOU BACK UP THE DATA ON THE CARD IN CASE THIS GOES WRONG.
On a PC: Copy (the encrypted and unreadable) contents of the sd card from the phone to your harddrive
On the phone: Settings -> Storage -> Sd Card -> Format sd card (this erases all the data on the sd card but don't worry you have a copy on the PC)
On the phone: Settings -> Security -> Encrypt sd Card (should be real fast since it's an empty sd card)
On the PC: Copy the contents of the sd card onto the phone
On the phone: Settings -> Security -> Decrypt sd card (edit: this may take a while depending on how much data was on the card)
sorry but none of the above "solutions" makes any sense. it is not possible to recover data. encryption key was located /data/misc/vold and /data itself was encrypted, too. Furthermore one can't access /data aka userdata partition.
BUT... and here comes the but.. adoptable-storage usually is DISABLED in One UI
So how is it possible your MicroSD Card is encrypted at all? It's not, except you have installed custom ROM or installed any 3rd party encryption tool (you would remember)
There is a good chance your MicroSD Card is plain exFAT or Fat32 unencrypted file system. I recommend to use a card reader for PC and make a 1:1 dump with gddrescue and analyze the dump with photorec or other file carver solutions.
There exist tools for windows too, for example
https://www.klennet.com/carver
https://www.z-a-recovery.com
https://www.runtime.org
Don't buy any software if your MicroSD Card is encrypted, it will definitely not work.
You can easily check if your MicroSD Card is encrypted by opening raw disk image with HxD hex editor and search for any plain text or series of zeros. gparted or testdisk will tell you if partition table exist
aIecxs said:
sorry but none of the above "solutions" makes any sense. it is not possible to recover data. encryption key was located /data/misc/vold and /data itself was encrypted, too. Furthermore one can't access /data aka userdata partition.
BUT... and here comes the but.. adoptable-storage usually is DISABLED in One UI
So how is it possible your MicroSD Card is encrypted at all? It's not, except you have installed custom ROM or installed any 3rd party encryption tool (you would remember)
There is a good chance your MicroSD Card is plain exFAT or Fat32 unencrypted file system. I recommend to use a card reader for PC and make a 1:1 dump with gddrescue and analyze the dump with photorec or other file carver solutions.
There exist tools for windows too, for example
https://www.klennet.com/carver
https://www.z-a-recovery.com
https://www.runtime.org
Don't buy any software if your MicroSD Card is encrypted, it will definitely not work.
You can easily check if your MicroSD Card is encrypted by opening raw disk image with HxD hex editor and search for any plain text or series of zeros. gparted or testdisk will tell you if partition table exist
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
when you put an SD card into a Samsung ultra it asks if you want to encrypt it through their own software, no third party apps were used
True, I realized after posting. Samsung is always bit special, they tried to think differently... In that case your data was lost in the moment of factory reset.
https://www.samsung.com/au/support/mobile-devices/how-to-encrypt-decrypt-sd-card
Stu_C said:
Hi all
I have a Samsung S20 Ultra with a memory card that all of my photos are saved to, unfortunately I had to take my phone into Samsung experience store for a screen / back cover repair, the staff removed my Memory card and told me to factory reset due to GDPR as the device had to be sent away, when my device returned in the post 5 days later I went to put the memory card back in and a notice appeared stating the memory card is encrypted to a different device! I am totally devastated as there are pictures of my father who has passed away and other images that they are the only copies I have, I know now I should have unencrypted the memory card before the factory reset. I have spoken to Samsung directly so say there is nothing that can be done.
does anyone know of a way I can get round this I would be so very grateful!
Thanks in advanced
Stu
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello, have an experience that my samsung device were dead and my sd card still encrypted.
Firstly, you have to backup entire data on your sd card just in case.
And then, format your sd card using another device (maybe your another android).
Last, put your sd card to windows device and recover all data with DiskDigger software.
It's work on my sd card, give it a try.. Dont forget to backup all data
Greetings!
I have an LG V60 which is carrier unlocked, though it is the T-mobile variant and it just so happens that T-mobile is my service provider.
When I purchased my V60, Android 10 came installed and within a few weeks the Android 11 push had started. I have a ton of apps on my phone and a bunch of data, so I bought the largest SD card available at the time, which was a SanDisk 1 TB SD card. I immediately configured adoptable storage without any issues whatsoever. I enabled the option under developer options to allow apps to be installed on external storage even if the manifest file says otherwise. My upgrade to Android 11 was a piece of cake, and life was pretty good.
Fast forward to two days ago. T-Mobile started putting pressure on me to in install Android 12, so I cleaned up my V60 and let it rip.
My phone booted up with Android 12 and the only glitch I noticed was a warning about my SD card being ejected and that I should insert it again if I wanted to use it. It was still installed, so I physically ejected the card and reinserted it. The system remounted the 600GB partition I use for general storage, but I noticed some very important apos seemed missing.
After hunting around a bit, I realized that the mount point for the adoptable storage partition was not shown. I then used Termix to get to a shell and tried to run sm to figure out what was going on. Much to my disappointment, I can't locate the sm utility after issuing a find command from Termix. Note that my device is not rooted.
I ask pretty much at a loss about what to do. I don't know enough about how all this stuff works internally, so I'm reluctant to copy sm from an earlier version of Android and just see if it works.
Aside from reverting back to Android 11, which I'm pretty sure is doable, but by using the firehose driver, an engineering bootloader, and QPST, I am at a loss about what to do.
I just can't believe that LG/T-mobile could be so inconsiderate as to not identify adoptable storage configurations before proceeding with the installation of Android 12. I am locked out of many of my most important apps, the most noticeable loss is AquaMail, which I rely on heavily to manage several email accounts.
Any thoughts on how to proceed? I really hope there's a silver bullet that will get me out of this logjam.
I would be grateful if anyone out there who understands this stuff better than I do (which isn't saying much because I know just enough to be dangerous, it seems) can help me out of this bind.
Thank you!
Here's some additional information that I learned since I posted my issue yesterday.
Adoptable storage, or at least the "sm" utility used to manage it, *IS* actually present on my device. I forgot how tightly the file systems have been locked down, so the 'sm' until is only accessible from a shell started by adb. So, the fact that I couldn't manipulate adoptable storage from Termux is not really an issue at all; it's expected.
That said, I am still having trouble with adoptable storage. Here's what I know:
sm list-disks shows disk:179,0. This is consistent with other installations.
sm list-volumes shows, among other things, private:179,3 unmountable. Previously it showed private:179,3 mounted 8hex-4hex-4hex-4hex-12hex, and that gnarly file name corresponded to the mountpoint /mnt/expand/8hex-4hex-4hex-4hex-12hex. The filesysyem was ext4 and it was /dev/block/dm-3. That is where my adopted storage was located. Now the device can't seem to access that filesystem at all.
Any thoughts? I really hope there's a stupid-easy fix to this, or I'm going to lose a ton of data.
Thanks!
Just thinking out loud, but have you tried the card in a PC so see if you can backup the data before you do anything.
I would go so far as to say, you DEFINETLY CAN back up the data. Use dd to make an image of the card. If you are tight on space you can pipe it into gzip but I would recomend just leaving it uncompressed as its easier to access the files in the image if you need to later. I run zfs with compression so it doesnt save much space anyway. Allways make two copies. I dont mean make one image and copy it. I mean, image it twice. If your REALLY paranoid or its really really important to you (like it contains all the blackmail pictures on your boss, your bitcoin and those videos you made with your really hot ex-gf), you image it twice on different computers.
You can find the procedure on google. If you dont have a pc with linux you can find a recovery disk or live cd distribution.
Greetings,
Sorry for taking so long to respond. I can mount the SD card on my PC, but what's visible is my 800GB encrypted exFAT partition which normally mounts on my V60 as /storage/abcd-wxzy. What's not visible is the ext4 partition that normally mounts on my V60 as /mnt/expand/8hex-4hex-... My PC has software on it to automatically mount ext4 partitions (Linux Filesystems for Windows by Paragaon Software) and it works fine. When I examined the partition in a sector editor, it shares nothing in common with other ext4 filesystems, which leads me to believe that it is encrypted.
So basically the upgrade from Android 11 to Android 12 seems to have made my adopted storage volume completely inaccessible. I have tried unsuccessfully to downgrade from Android 12 to Android 11, but that was a complete disaster. I am not sure if there is a proper method to downgrade from Android 12 to Android 11. I'm sure LG tries to prevent downgrades, but I have seen examples of operating system downgrades previously, just not from Android 12 to Android 11 on the LG V60, specifically.
I am at a loss. I fear my data on the adopted partition is lost, which would be horrible.
By the way, I can and have imaged the physical partition on my SD card that contains the ext4 partition that is used as adoptable storage, but I can't do anything with it because it is completely unrecognizable. I'm still going with the theory that it's encrypted.
I beg anyone who has any insight on how to get past this to please share what they know. I'm getting desperate. I can't possibly believe an upgrade from Android 11 to Android 12 would kill my adoptable storage volume. That just doesn't make any sense :-(
Thanks!
pqcracker2 said:
so I cleaned up my V60 and let it rip.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
do you mean factory reset? if yes your data is 100% gone
the encryption keys are all stored in the userdata partition so if that partition got formatted somehow (be it bootloader unlock or sth else) they are lost, and even if they are not lost itll be hard/impossible to get to them as android 11/12 locks down read access to the userdata partition extremely