[How-to] Guide to Rooting with software version LS670ZVC

[cordell]

best bet is to just take it to a store. i just bricked mine and am about to head down there now.

i don't know what i did lol. somewhere in the flash back to stock. flashed everything back to stock for like the 5th time and this last time when it rebooted after flashing radio it stuck at lg. can't get into recovery or anything.

What happened with your trip to the sprint store? Mine was OK I guess. I handed the phone to the repair man who tried to boot to recovery a few times then went to his manager I presume. I overheard them talking about how he wanted the "brick". It seems he wanted to swap me out for a phone in the store so he could play with it, attempt to recover. The manager said "no" something about a phone allowance and for him to not care about that so he can play with a brick. There is a bit more to the story but I dont want to broadcast that part, dont want to jeopardize my order Anyway I had to pay $35 for a replacement that I didnt even get today! UPS, I hope they use next day air saver! Until then I have a old blackberry laying around. Can I flash Froyo to my blackberry? LOL J/K

 

[hamagc]

basically the same thing. they tried a few times to get into recovery but couldn't

mine is being ordered in store, will be here friday. i'm supprised they charged you. i do have tep on my acct which could be the difference but i figured since you were in your factory warranty period they would just swap you out.

until then looks like i'm working off of my old TP1 and xdandroid again. i kinda miss that project lol.

 

[kingdavidbaker]

Okay I tried Rooting from LS670ZVC last night before this post was updated. I updated to VC by downloading the update, renaming it to update.zip and placing it on my sdcard and running update from LG recovery. Update ran fine. I then followed these instructions trying to root. Everything worked fine except I never got the # prompt. After trying ten times or so I gave up and decided to try again today. Now after I run ./rageagainstthecage I am kicked out of adb and when I try to run adb shell again i get the "error: device not found". It wasn't doing this last night and now I see something about needing to use LG update tool....was I not supposed to use the update.zip/recovery method? Also am I unable to root now? Is there some way to factory reset the phone and start the process over?

 

[sfhub]

mine is being ordered in store, will be here friday. i'm supprised they charged you. i do have tep on my acct which could be the difference but i figured since you were in your factory warranty period they would just swap you out.

until then looks like i'm working off of my old TP1 and xdandroid again. i kinda miss that project lol.

A few months back they changed their policy once again so they don't handle warranty after 30 days anymore. You are supposed to send it back to the manufacturer yourself. If you want them to "expedite" your warranty claim it'll cost $35, unless you have TEP.

Also if you swap in an old smartphone (outside of using Sprint's replacement services - ie not using TEP or $35) then you are exposed to the new $10 smartphone addon. Also once the manufacturer returns your phone, you are exposed to the $10 smartphone addon. Those changes took effect Jan 30.

It is kind of annoying as your "new" phone that gets replaced by the $35 method usually comes back as a refurb, with only 30 days of warranty. Their current policy doesn't extend the refurb warranty to match the remainder of your manufacturer's warranty.

YMMV of course, and you could always find a sympathetic ear at Sprint to override their policies.

 

[sfhub]

It wasn't doing this last night and now I see something about needing to use LG update tool....was I not supposed to use the update.zip/recovery method?

The OTA update (the file renamed to update.zip) does things differently from the LG Update Tool. In particular there is no currently known way to root after that update. However that was not known until a couple of hours ago, so there really isn't anything you could have planned on doing differently other than just being lucky and choosing to use the LG Update Tool from the beginning.

There may be a way to force a V9 update onto a VC unit. It is on the KDC recovery thread.

 

[cordell]

A few months back they changed their policy once again so they don't handle warranty after 30 days anymore. You are supposed to send it back to the manufacturer yourself. If you want them to "expedite" your warranty claim it'll cost $35, unless you have TEP.

Also if you swap in an old smartphone (outside of using Sprint's replacement services - ie not using TEP or $35) then you are exposed to the new $10 smartphone addon. That change took effect Jan 30.

Wait a sec, if I activate my blackberry for a phone to use until my replacement comes I will have the $10 fee, and if I do not activate it and just wait for my replacement I will not have the $10 fee?

 

[drewwalton19216801]

Okay I tried Rooting from LS670ZVC last night before this post was updated. I updated to VC by downloading the update, renaming it to update.zip and placing it on my sdcard and running update from LG recovery. Update ran fine. I then followed these instructions trying to root. Everything worked fine except I never got the # prompt. After trying ten times or so I gave up and decided to try again today. Now after I run ./rageagainstthecage I am kicked out of adb and when I try to run adb shell again i get the "error: device not found". It wasn't doing this last night and now I see something about needing to use LG update tool....was I not supposed to use the update.zip/recovery method? Also am I unable to root now? Is there some way to factory reset the phone and start the process over?

Yep, you're unable to root for the time being. Seems the OTA update breaks root and the LG update tool doesn't. Yes, I know it makes absolutely no sense at all. Until Zefie (or whomever) finds a way to force flash V9, you have a permanently stock phone.

 

[drewwalton19216801]

Wait a sec, if I activate my blackberry for a phone to use until my replacement comes I will have the $10 fee, and if I do not activate it and just wait for my replacement I will not have the $10 fee?

(Apologies for double posting)

Yep, that is precisely what will happen. Oh, Sprint. When will you get your head out of the sand?

 

[sfhub]

Wait a sec, if I activate my blackberry for a phone to use until my replacement comes I will have the $10 fee, and if I do not activate it and just wait for my replacement I will not have the $10 fee?

Yes, that is the official policy as written by Sprint.

I heard a rumor they "adjusted" the policy so if you activated an old smartphone temporarily in the context of a TEP or $35 replacement, they would make an exception, but I didn't see them update the written policy to reflect this information.

Again, YMMV especially early on where there could be some leeway for the reps to apply a $0 Premium Data Addon for sticky situations.

 

[kingdavidbaker]

I guess whats annoying me is that I wasn't getting the device not found error last night and now suddenly i'm screwed lol

 

[cordell]

(Apologies for double posting)

Yep, that is precisely what will happen.

WoW! Thats DIRTY, they offered to re-activate my Hero but I told them I had sold it. When I mentioned I have a blackberry he told me "just hop online and you can activate that until your replacement arrives, then switch them out". Never stating anything about the $10 fee! Its not that big of a deal money wise, on March 1st I will be upgrading to a Evo (or something, wanted dual core but Feb 7th was a big flop) and giving my wife the Optimus, replacing her Hero. So I will have $20 in fee's soon, just the fact that they said nothing is what is bothersome.

 

[sfhub]

Putting exact steps would have been good.

You can't neglect to put something down you weren't aware of. Nobody seemed to be aware of the issue until early this morning as most people up until then had updated using the LG update tool. It is possible some people knew about the limitation on the rooting procedure but didn't note it. What you want to be concerned about now is whether you can force flash V9 back.

In his defense, he did put up a big warning when he found out about it.

 

[kingdavidbaker]

Yeah I'm trying to use the KDZ method found at the link below but keep getting "extract file error". Does anybody know of some other way to do a factory reset?

http://forum.androidcentral.com/lg-...s/52145-how-unbrick-your-phone-using-kdz.html

 

[drewwalton19216801]

Thanks, sfhub. Given the situation I do not believe it was unreasonable to assume that the two methods of updating would produce the same end result.

However it appears that they do in fact produce very different results and as sfhub mentioned I did put up an obnoxiously large warning about it as soon as I found out about the issue.

 

[jrsndr]

Okay, I just got my phone about 10 days ago. I did an OTA update to VC and cannot get root, at least following the instructions on the first page. Hopefully you guys will come up with a way to get root for the newer phones or those that did the OTA update!

I must say, however, I have a very weak signal at my house and 3G would constantly drop off, but now I remain connected with no dropping off....

 

[alexdreid]

Anybody know of a way to do this on a Mac? Thanks!

 

[drewwalton19216801]

Anybody know of a way to do this on a Mac? Thanks!

Use Windows in a VM? Unless the LG update tool works on Mac, Windows is probably necessary. If someone knows differently please correct me.

 

[s33ker]

My thoughts on the matter...

 

[kingdavidbaker]

Ugh this is so annoying. All i had to do was wait one day and I could have avoided all this crap. Guess we just gotta wait til someone figures out a way to root or restore with the OTA VC update.

 

[drewwalton19216801]

Bloodbought, you sir are a genius with that one. Bravo.