Good news for those of you that were hoping to root your EVO the minute you tear it free from the box: the instructions and files needed in order to root the device have been officially released online.
User ‘toastcfh’ over at XDA-Developers, who’s been providing us with teaser images and video of his rooted EVO for the last couple of weeks, has come clean with detailed instructions on how you can get sweet, sweet root access on your EVO. You can find his original thread here, and I’ll paste our tweaked and detailed version of his tutorial below as well. Note that all credit goes to ‘toastcfh’ for this incredible feat.
It’s interesting to note that they haven’t been able to find a way to write to the system or recovery partitions while booted into the Android operating system. I know for a fact this can be done on the Nexus One and T-Mobile G1/HTC Dream, but am not sure about other phones.
Grab The Files Here
Should anything happen to the above links, I’m mirroring them here:
Get To Flashing Here
Luckily this seems like it’s pretty easy to accomplish. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some hands on information from our resident EVO 4G owner Artem, when he returns from his vacation in Europe.
How To Flash The Rom:
- Place the previously linked PC36IMG.zip in the root of your SD card
- Turn your phone off
- Hold down the ‘Volume Down’ button while powering on the phone. Keep the ‘Volume Down’ button held down until you see a white boot loader screen
- After a few seconds, the boot loader will scan the SD card for update files. It should locate PC36IMG.zip. According to XDA-Developers, you’ll see a blue progress bar and it should take about 30-60 seconds to complete
- You should then see a list of images that were found, and it will ask you if you would like to flash. Say yes.
- Once that has completed it will ask you if you would like to reboot. Again, say yes.
- The phone will reboot into a fresh, rooted rom! Enjoy!
Over at XDA they also recommend renaming the PC36IMG.zip on your SD card to something like ‘root-PC36IMG.zip’. I’m not sure why that’s necessary, but I’m sure they mentioned it for a reason.
How To Flash The Recovery Image:
You’ll need access to the ‘adb’ utility from the Android SDK. Luckily, toastcfh packaged this in to the EVO-recovery.zip.
- Download the EVO-recovery.zip linked above
- Once that’s finished downloading, extract it to a directory you can access via the command line.
- At this point we want to open up the command line
- In Windows, you’ll probably want to go to Run –> then type ‘cmd’ and press enter
- In OSX, you’ll want to go to Finder –> Applications –> Utilities –> Terminal
- In Linux, use the terminal of your choice.
- Hopefully you know your way around the command line..at least enough to get to the directory where the files have been extracted. If you don’t, then you may want to hit the Googles for specific information on your command line program.
- Once you’re in the directory, type:
- In Windows: ‘adb-windows.exe reboot recovery’ without quotes, then press enter
- In OSX: ‘./adb-mac reboot recovery’ without quotes, then press enter. If that returns an error, try typing this first: ‘chmod 755 adb-mac’, then re-entering the first command
- In Linux: ‘./adb-linux reboot recovery’ without quotes, then press enter. If that returns an error, try typing this first: ‘chmod 755 adb-linux’, then re-entering the first command
- Your EVO should now be in recovery mode.
- The next step diverges a bit based on your operating system
- In Windows, Open up the directory you extracted ‘EVO-recovery.zip’ to in Explorer, then double click ‘recovery-windows.bat. Make sure it’s running as an administrator.
- In OSX: Again, from the terminal, type ‘./recovery-mac.sh’. If that returns an error, try typing this first: ‘chmod 755 recovery-mac.sh’, then re-enter the ‘./recovery-mac.sh’ command
- In Linux: Again, from the terminal, type ‘./recovery-linux.sh’. If that returns an error, try typing this first: ‘chmod 755 recovery-linux.sh’, then re-enter the ‘./recovery-linux.sh’ command
- At this point, you should be at the recovery image. You’re pretty much done. You can make a Nandroid backup if you’d like, or you can go ahead and reboot.
Again, many thanks to toastcfh over at XDA-developers for accomplishing this. If you have any questions or problems, I’d suggest browsing through the thread at XDA or leaving a comment. We’ll try and help you out if possible.
Enjoy!
Source: XDA-Developers
Via: Engadget





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23 Comments
ha, I'm watching this using the WiFi hotspot on my new EVO, I got from Google I/O.
Can someone help me!!
How do i get to the command line?
I have unzipped the EVO file but when i use my vista CMD prompt i get know where..
Does this reset the device(ie. erase contacts and settings)?
That's what the article says, in red.
Yes. During the process it will wipe your EVO clean of memory and send it back to its original condition.
Rom flashed. Now for the recovery rom I get device not found when trying the ''adb-windows.exe reboot recovery''. Phone is plugged in with no usb errors. Any ideas?
Did you install the USB driver for windows?
I'm on a Mac. I get to EVO Recovery Mode, but I get a prompt for a password. I've tried blank, 0000, 9999, 1111, 1234, my phone number, the last four digits of my phone number. And I didn't set up a device password. Can anyone provide some help?
@Doug it's your Mac's Admin password, not the phone's password
"Over at XDA they also recommend renaming the PC36IMG.zip on your SD card to something like ‘root-PC36IMG.zip’."
Don't do this. Leave the image called PC36IMG.ZIP or it will not be detected by the bootloader.
I left that at the bottom of the steps as it's something that, if you choose to do, should be done after you initially flash the image.
I have kind of a seriously stupid question.. i know it's stupid.. Trout me, whatever.. But, If you root your phone, and then decide you don't want to keep sprints services and want to return it within the 30 days, is there any way to un-root it.. get it back to pre-hacked stated to be able to return it?
I have followed the instructions exactly but I do not see the superuser app installed. Something I did wrong? I've done it so many times thinking it was a problem with the download but same result every time.
when i start to flash the rom it never promted me to flas any images nor did it show any images.
I rooted my evo, but now 4g isn't working
There is a 4G fix floating around - it should fix you right up: http://link.geekfor.me/fresh4gpatch
My question is along the lines of Alysa's earlier question...
I want to "do" the 30 day trial and not because I don't think I'll like the phone, only because I heard Sprint service is bad in my area. Can someone post a link for "unrooting" in case the phone/service doesn't work out for me?
Thanks!
thanks for the guide. helped out so much. will you be doing something like this for the nand root? could use all the help i can....
We don't and can't take credit for the root method - xda members, specifically, toastcfh are given full credit.
However, if we hear about an easier method, we will definitely let everyone know.
Once I download the root file how do I move it to the top of my SD card?
if I unrooted the evo, can I move to another carrier like at&t?
AT&T uses sim cards, Sprint uses none.
I'm with Eddie, Sprint uses a CDMA network like Verizon. GSM are the Sim card friendly ones; such as ATT and Tmobile
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