How to: Update your rooted V9/VC baseband Optimus S to VD w/out losing all your data.

[Robchaos_]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about how to easily switch over to the VD baseband, so I will throw this up for everyone so you don't have to search or root through hundreds of pages of threads for instructions.

PLEASE READ THE RED WARNINGS IN THE FIRST POST OF SFHUBS THREAD IF YOU HAVE A SPRINT REFURBISHED PHONE.



If you already are rooted and have a custom recovery in place you can easily move from the V9/VC baseband to the newest VD update without having to re-root, or reinstall any of your apps
Prerequisites:
-A fully charged phone
-USB debugging enabled
-Android SDK with ADB tools helps a lot
-The LG Software Updater and drivers installed.


For some reason a lot of people out there are having trouble accessing recovery by pulling the battery and powering on the phone while holding the proper buttons down. I am suggesting to use ADB to reboot to recovery.


Standard Disclaimer: YMMV and do not blame me for any bricked phones or failed flashes. I am just posting up what worked for me and should work for you too


This is tested working by myself and many others.
1. Place the VD baseband compatible rom of your choice onto the root directory of your SD card.

2. Boot your phone into recovery and create a nandroid backup of your current rom.

3. Reboot your phone and connect it to your computer.

4. Run the LG updater tool to update your phone to the latest VD baseband

5. Once the LG updater is done flashing the firmware to your phone, your phone will reboot. I let my phone boot all the way up to the point where it was asking me to download a sprintID theme.

6. Fire up the command prompt! Go to your android SDK tools folder and type the following into your command prompt (not in an adb shell)
adb reboot recovery

7. Nandroid Restore the backup you made in step 1 then reboot your phone.

8. Wipe Dalvik Cache and Wipe Cache (no need to wipe data as that is nothing but all the apps you would be reinstalling anyways.)

9. Flash your VD compatible rom of choice to your phone and then select reboot when it is done flashing.

10. Your first boot might take a minute due to the phone having to rebuild the dalvik cache. Enjoy your phone still rooted, with all your apps, and the VD baseband compatible with all new versions of Thunderom and Nrom.

 

[kalex]

nice. least invasive way. Going to try it tomorrow. Need to find windows machine

 

[sfhub]

For some reason a lot of people out there are having trouble accesing recovery by pulling the battery and powering on the phone while holding the proper buttons down. This has lead some people into mistakenly thinking that the LG updater has either bricked their phone, or unrooted them and overwritten their recovery partition when that is not the case, so for this reason I am suggesting to use ADB to reboot to recovery.

Those phone really do get stuck at the LG screen. LG updater was likely complicit, but those folks were likely running LG updater in a different non-standard way (emergency mode)

We believe we have narrowed it down to something related to flashing the VC cab in emergency mode (ie the unbrick thread) Cordell was having the problem of getting stuck at the LG screen when flashing VC in emergency mode. When he switched to diag mode (ie Force Flash VC in the reference section of the link in my signature), that problem didn't occur.

 

[Robchaos_]

Those phone really do get stuck at the LG screen. LG updater was likely complicit, but those folks were likely running LG updater in a different non-standard way (emergency mode)

We believe we have narrowed it down to something related to flashing the VC cab in emergency mode (ie the unbrick thread) Cordell was having the problem of getting stuck at the LG screen when flashing VC in emergency mode. When he switched to diag mode (ie Force Flash VC in the reference section of the link in my signature), that problem didn't occur.

Gotcha. I removed that part from the post, either way this should work on the majority of phones out there, and from what I'm hearing, if it doesn't work on your phone, chances are you would have had a good chance of having a problem even if your phone was completely stock and you accepted the update in the proper way.

 

[junkshow]

Interesting...it seemed to me during the OTA and LG Software Updater update that the baseband was written to the cache partition, then it rebooted to a special recovery mode that copied the baseband to the radio partition and wiped cache. I'm having trouble understanding how a custom recovery could pull this non-standard type of install off. Are you sure your baseband is actually updated?

 

[Robchaos_]

If I am to believe what the phone information says, yes I am sure. About Phone reports LS670MVC_60401001 for baseband. I wasn't paying much attention as the LG updater was updating my phone, but why would a tool run on the PC have to write the update to the cache of the phone before flashing it to the radio? I thought it downloaded it to a temporary folder on the computer.

 

[trekkie1701c]

Hmm... Had been told that you could not update without going to stock. So essentially I can update, restore a backup, flash a ROM, and be good?

 

[junkshow]

If I am to believe what the phone information says, yes I am sure. About Phone reports LS670MVC_60401001 for baseband. I wasn't paying much attention as the LG updater was updating my phone, but why would a tool run on the PC have to write the update to the cache of the phone before flashing it to the radio? I thought it downloaded it to a temporary folder on the computer.

Cool...now that I think about it, I guess it was just the OTA that did the weird recovery gyration with the baseband update. I went through so many different things trying to get the VC update to run that I can't keep them all straight. Nice tip! This should save people from a lot of pain.

 

[dafluke24]

Works for me. Just update to 1.7 straight from 1.6.2 with no hang ups or errors. I went ahead and wiped data because I like to load everything up fresh. My ocd, I believe lol Great step by step writeup.

 

[jstntp]

Ok I just followed the above steps to a tee, and I am hung up on the LG screen. Any ideas?

 

[trekkie1701c]

Just curious, which recovery were you using? The directions seem to indicate Drellisdee's 1.1 recovery rather than his 1.2 or Zefie's CWM recovery, and they do all handle flashing a bit different.

That said, haven't tried this yet, so no idea if that pans out Just something I've noticed now re-reading through the thread.

 

[jstntp]

Using 1.1 for sure.

 

[jstntp]

I pulled battery and was able to get to recovery via Down, Home, Power. So now I am trying to apply the nand backup I made of 1.6.2 again. Ill update in a minute.

Update: Haha I got out of it!!!!

Was not able to apply the Nandroid I made before the update to VC. So from recovery I just flashed ThundeRom 1.7 and viola, it booted fine. Will have to reinstall apps and such, but NO BRICK.

 

[jstntp]

Ok just want to clarify exactly what I did in case anyone else runs into this problem of getting hung up on the LG screen.

I followed steps 1-7 from Robchaos' instructions on the first page.

After I restored the nandriod backup and rebooted, I got stuck on the LG screen for over 10 minutes.

Pulled battery. Waited a minute. Installed battery and held Volume down, Home, and Power and got back into recovery.

Wiped Data, Cache, and Dalvik then flashed the ThundeRom V1.7 zip

Phone rebooted fine. Had no apps, contacts, or any other settings restored, but I did not have a brick, so who cares.

Also I flashed Zefie's 008 Kernel and the Stock Button zip.

Everything works great.

Not sure why some people (me) had problems with this method, but none the less I still got VC with custom recovery and still rooted. What more can you ask for.

Thanks to Robchaos and all devs invloved in these roms.

 

[tmeader]

Just curious, which recovery were you using? The directions seem to indicate Drellisdee's 1.1 recovery rather than his 1.2 or Zefie's CWM recovery, and they do all handle flashing a bit different.

That said, haven't tried this yet, so no idea if that pans out Just something I've noticed now re-reading through the thread.

Worked fine for me tonight using the CWM recovery.

 

[propesh]

Much Thanks! Worked very well for me.

 

[sfhub]

Interesting...it seemed to me during the OTA and LG Software Updater update that the baseband was written to the cache partition, then it rebooted to a special recovery mode that copied the baseband to the radio partition and wiped cache. I'm having trouble understanding how a custom recovery could pull this non-standard type of install off. Are you sure your baseband is actually updated?

LG Software Updater doesn't rely on the recovery partition. It writes directly to the phone in diag (or emergency) mode. LG Software Updater is a flash tool.

OTA update.zip is implemented more as a patch process. It depends on stuff already being there, which the process then patches. It uses mechanisms already on the phone to do the actual radio flashing.

 

[sfhub]

If I am to believe what the phone information says, yes I am sure. About Phone reports LS670MVC_60401001 for baseband. I wasn't paying much attention as the LG updater was updating my phone, but why would a tool run on the PC have to write the update to the cache of the phone before flashing it to the radio? I thought it downloaded it to a temporary folder on the computer.

You do have the VC radio after running the LG Software Updater tool.

However, I don't think you can really trust the versions reported for the baseband. If I recall correct, those are actually hard coded strings in the ROM. They aren't being dynamically read from the baseband.

You can tell for sure you have the VC radio if you are using ThunderROM and don't get hands free activation problems popping up on your screen.

 

[CarrieK]

Ok I just followed the above steps to a tee, and I am hung up on the LG screen. Any ideas?

This happened to me. Make sure you hold down the power, volume down, and home buttons simultaneously and as hard as you can like you're trying to kill the phone, lol which at that point I think I was trying to do , until the custom recovery comes up.

Well duh, I see now that you got it...awesome Please forgive me. Late night!

 

[Robchaos_]

For everyone asking, this should work the same for any recovery.
Jstntp, even with the freeze at the lg logo after restoring your backup, you probably could have got by without wiping data, just the caches, so you'd still have your apps. It is more likely something in the system partition not playing well and system gets over written when you flash the new rom.