That was the thing that flummoxed me a little as well - I'm pretty tech savvy but this was outside my sphere of understanding. Here's what you'll need to do, step-by-step, to get to where I am now...
Be aware that rooting invalidates your warranty.
1) Get 'SMSBackup' on your phone, use this to back up SMS messages. I also have 'BookmarkSB' which backs up my bookmarks.
2) Get 'Titanium Backup' from the Market. It only works on rooted phones, and is where I ran into some issues - I couldn't run Titanium without rooting, but I couldn't root without doing a hard reset as the Unrevoked process failed originally. I sort of got around this by using AppBrain which kept a record of all my apps (but not my settings - I lost things like game progress etc - nothing to cry about). Using AppBrain is fairly useful anyway, so I'd install that from the Market and 'Sync' your apps with your AppBrain account online (which can use your Gmail address). Make sure your contacts are saved as Google contacts, this will mean they simply sync 'over the air' when you're on the new ROM.
3) Go to
http://unrevoked.com/ and download the HTC Desire version.
4) You will also need to download the Windows drivers for Android from here:
http://unrevoked.com/rootwiki/doku.php/public/wind... which also gives you instructions for how to install them.
4a)
NEW POINT TO CHECK - Ensure you have the HTC Sync installed - this installs the "HTC BMP USB Driver" the "HTC Driver Installer" and "HTC Sync". You must then uninstall ONLY the HTC Sync part - leave the USB Driver and Driver Installer installed - Unrevoked won't work without these installed.5) Run Unrevoked, and let it do its stuff. It guides you through the process and worked really well. You will need to enable 'USB Debugging' - Settings > Security > Applications > Development > USB Debugging
6) If Unrevoked gives a failure message like I received ("error: Failed to get root. Is your firmware too new?") then you'll need to do a hard reset.
7) ONLY DO A HARD RESET IF YOU CAN'T GET ROOT:
- With the phone turned off, press and hold the VOLUME DOWN button, and then briefly press the POWER button.
- Wait for the screen with the three Android images to appear, and then release the VOLUME DOWN button..
- Press VOLUME DOWN to select CLEAR STORAGE, and then press POWER.
- Press VOLUME UP to start the factory reset.
8) Once the factory reset is done, your phone will be as it arrived out-of-the-box. Run Unrevoked again and it should give you root access. Your phone is now 'rooted'.
9) Once you have root access, backup your apps using Titanium. Next you need to back up the original phone ROM as a precaution - this is known as a 'Nandroid' backup. To do this, boot into Recovery:
- Press and hold the Vol Down button and power button - you'll be presented with a new, rooted menu entitled 'ClockworkMod Recovery'
- Scroll down using the trackpad to 'Backup and Restore'
- Select 'Backup' - the phone will backup the core operating system to the SD card.
10) Save everything from the SD card to your PC. Create a folder on your desktop and copy it all across. This will copy all your Titanium Backup files and the Nandroid backup you just did. This is really important.
11) Now we need to partition the SD card. I used Gparted - this page suggests you DON'T partition using the Recovery console, in order to avoid errors. I am a person who likes to avoid errors! Here are the steps for partitioning using Gparted:
- Download the Gparted .iso file from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gpar...
- You'll end up with a file called 'gparted-live-0.8.1-3.iso'. This is an image file that you'll need to burn to CD. I used ImgBurn which can be downloaded here: http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download
- Open the image file in ImgBurn and follow the instructions. It will spit out a 'Live CD' which you can boot from. I used my laptop as I wanted access to the instructions on the PC. However, this part is relatively straightforward. Despite my original complaints about the Gparted disc mucking up my Windows install, I've used Gparted subsequently and it was fine - clearly an error on my part somewhere - the Gparted LiveCD works great.
12) Boot the PC from the DVD drive with the Gparted disc inserted.
- You'll get a menu screen - click 'Gparted Live (Default)
- A load of stuff will scroll up the screen and a menu will appear asking about Keymaps. I selected 'Don't touch keymap' - just hit 'Enter'
- You'll be asked what language you prefer - type '02' and then hit enter
- When asked what mode you prefer, type '0' and hit enter
- You'll be presented with the Gparted desktop. It will open the partitioning editor. On the right-hand side is a drop-down box - select the SD card, which will be identifiable by its size. Mine is a 16Gb card and showed up as 14.8Gb. Be VERY careful to make sure you select the right device, as if you accidentally change the partitions of your hard drive, you'll end up being unable to boot your PC. One of the benefits of doing this on the laptop was that it only has one hard drive and that's 250Gb - so not easy to get wrong! The only other device was the card reader with my SD card in.
- Now you've selected your SD card, you'll be presented with a screen that shows the partitions. Since I'd backed up all my data, I deleted the partitions and started from scratch. Right click on the partitions and 'Delete'. You should be left with a grey box showing 'Unallocated - 14.8Gb' (or whatever size your SD card is).
- Right click on the unallocated space. Click 'New'. You're at the 'Create New Partition' window. Adjust the 'New Size (MiB) down by around 1040 (this will give you around 1Gb of new 'phone' storage). Ensure that the 'Free Space Preceding' is '1', and that the 'Align to' box says 'MiB'. On the right, ensure 'Create as' is set to 'Primary Partition' and that the 'File System' is set to FAT32. No label is required. Click 'Add'. It's important that the FAT32 partition comes first.
- Now you'll have a screen with a green box showing 'New Partition #1' and the size. On the grey unallocated part to the right, right-click and choose 'New'. The default sizes will be whatever's left (around 1Gb) on your card. The only change you'll need to make on this page is to change the File System to 'ext4'. Click 'Add', and then the 'Apply' button at the top of the screen. Once that's done, close the Gparted window and click 'Exit'. The machine will reboot, so make sure you've removed the LiveCD from the DVD tray to allow it to boot back into Windows.
*****UPDATE***** - I've now switched to the RCMix 2.0 ROM:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=9... I think it's a better ROM, is Android 2.3 and has some lovely Sense stuff built in (parts from 3.0). Get it here if you'd rather have this:
http://rom.robocik.mobi/Desire/RCMixS/v2.0/RCMixS_...If you're installing the RCMix ROM, you won't need the Data2SD installer so you can skip all of that.
13) Download the Starburst zip file from here:
http://starburst.droidzone.in/wp-content/plugins/d... Don't unzip it once downloaded, it needs to stay zipped. You will need to create a login ID on the Starburst site in order to download.
14) Download the Data2SD installer from here:
http://starburst.droidzone.in/wp-content/plugins/d... Again, leave it zipped.
15) Copy the Starburst_Classic_1500.zip and Data2SDInstallerX5E.zip to your SD card.
16) Now you need to wipe the phone (you DID take that Nandroid backup earlier, didn't you..?
)
- Boot into Recovery
- Scroll down (using the trackpad) to 'Wipe Data/Factory Reset' and select (using the optical touchpad)
- Scroll to 'Yes' and select
17) Your phone now has no ROM on it. Click the 'back' button and scroll to 'Install Zip From SD Card'. Click select. Choose the Starburst zip and select. The Starburst ROM will now be installed.
- **NOTE - IF YOU'RE INSTALLING RCMix ROM, YOU DO NOT NEED DATA2SD - SKIP TO STEP 22****
18) Once it's installed, the phone will need rebooting. This is the part I had trouble with last night as I assumed the ROM included the Data2SD, which it didn't. The phone booted and had the LED lit in pink and then blue. At present you're running without Data2SD. Set up the Network provider and such, but skip all the setup parts such as Gmail and stuff; let the phone boot and settle.
19) Now hit the power button to turn the phone off - you'll notice you have an option in there for 'Recovery'. Select this option. The phone will reboot into the Recovery console.
20) In the same way you installed the Starburst ROM, you need to install the Data2SD zip file through the 'Install Zip from SD card' menu. Reboot the phone.
21) The phone will reboot and when you get into the settings, you should find that you now have 'Phone memory' of around 1Gb!
22) Now you can go about getting all your info back on the phone. If you were able to take a Titanium Backup, copy the original SD card contents across from the backup you took earlier (I wasn't able to do this, so had to reinstall all my apps via AppBrain). Run the Titanium restore.
23) Install SMSBackup from the Market and restore your SMS messages. Install BookmarkSB to restore your bookmarks. You'll need to log into the Market with your Google account to download.
24) Under the 'Sync' folder (Settings > Accounts and Sync) add your Google account; all your contacts will resync over the air.
25) Once all your apps and contacts are back, do a Nandroid backup of the 'new' phone settings to the SD card (and copy it to a backup folder on your PC).
Disclaimer: this is, to the best of my recollection, how I did everything last night. There may be a couple of steps that you'll need to double-check and I'm sure that if anyone spots an error in my instructions, they'll point it out.
There is no substitute for checking everything twice and understanding what you're doing before you do it!I hope this helps those who are in the same position I was in - overwhelmed by the amount of info out there which wasn't clear enough - but who would like their phone to perform better and be rid of those annoying low memory warnings once and for all!
There's one other benefit to this by the way - with App2SD, if you mounted the SD card for access through the PC, apps on the card wouldn't work properly. With Data2SD being a partition, all apps continue to work even with the SD card mounted as only the FAT32 partition gets mounted.
By the way, whenever I mount the SD card, Windows asks if I want to 'Scan and fix removable disk (P:
)?'. Always click 'Continue without scanning' as I've found the 'Scan and fix (recommended)' option causes problems.
I'm off to rest my fingers, hope this is useful to some of you! It took me a while to get there, but overall I would say it's very much worth it. I'll also be happy to help out with advice if I can!
Oh, and one nice touch I found today; the Starburst ROM re-enables 'Wake from Optical Pad' - a feature I'd been annoyed to find wasn't enabled on the Desire after having it on the Hero.
Massive thanks for this Funk, it took me the best part of 6 hours but I've finally got ICS on my desire!
A few notes though, Despite factory resetting twice I just couldn't get the unrevoked to work, kept coming up with the same 'firmware too new?' message, found a different version of unrevoked (version 322) and it worked first time.
k up my laptop!) that whole part was a breeze.
Then I came to the links in the above guide. The starburst and the RCmix ones are now out of date, but I wanted ICS anyway, so I added the Sandvold ICS zip and the starburst data2sd zips to the SD and loaded them both at the same time in the recovery boot. The ICS all installed fine, but on restart just kept looping through the boot screen (I left it about 15mins, while s
tting myself!). I tried a clockwork wipe and reinstall of just the ICS but kept having the same problem. I decided to try with the latest Sandvold ICS (0.4.2.1) and it worked first time!
So, ICS is up and running, but as has been mentioned it's very buggy. The main ones being I can't access the market (so can't install and restore my sms backup or appbrain), or look at the storage in settings to make sure it's all as it shoul be. I noticed on the sandvold site that bootloops could be caused by a bad zip, is it just a case of trying the 0.4.2 zip again, clear through clockwork and reinstall the new zip or would I need to do anything alse? Also, do I need some for of data2sd to go with the ICS, in the same way the starburst ROM did, as I now haven't got that one installed?
Once again, many thanks for the guide Funk, I wouldn't have even considered trying without it!
k up my laptop!) that whole part was a breeze.
