[How-To] Unroot your phone and return to stock

[ToddShroats]

If I rooted and installed custom recovery after upgraded to VC and I have a nand backup of stock rom, Do I need to go back to V8 -V9? Or can I flash stock recovery image and unroot. Will that work or do I have to go through your 29 step proses?

 

[sfhub]

If you have a stock VC NANDROID backup you can restore that from your Custom Recovery. After that flash the stock V9 recovery from an adb shell session to the Custom Recovery. That would be virtually the same end result as going through all the steps.

 

[javascriptvoid]

do you put recovery kernel and flash_image. in the root of sd card?

 

[ToddShroats]

I believe that is what you do. You put the both images on the root of your sd/card and the use the adb shell to push them into your phone. Or at least the flash_image for stock recovery.
My question is after returning to V9 version should I then do the lg update to bring my phone up to VC version? I don't plan on changing but just encase I want to understand the process.

 

[sfhub]

I'm confused what you are trying to accomplish. Your earlier post mentioned you were already on VC, rooted, and installed a custom recovery image.

Are you trying to go back to stock or are you trying to stay at VC and be rooted?

 

[ToddShroats]

I have the vc update and rooted, I want to make sure what I would have to do to go back to where I was before rooting. I am assuming something happens to my phone and I need to go back to stock to take it into the store. But wanted to know what I should do if I wanted to reroot?

 

[sfhub]

Assuming you are just running the stock VC OS, with the exception of being rooted.

To get back to where you were before rooting.

Remove "su" and "busybox" (and possibly "flash_image") from /system/bin
Remove "SuperUser.apk" from /system/app

Get rid of your Custom Recovery by flashing the stock V9 recovery image.

Wipe data/cache from Recovery.

To root after you get the phone back from Sprint (assuming they give you back the same phone), just follow the directions in the first post.

 

[ToddShroats]

thanks for the info.

 

[RoscoePColtrane]

WOW... this was a tedious process

I am new to android coming from webos, and I am amazed at how much work this is to remove the rom... It was a piece of cake on the Pre, but sprint and Hp are forcing me to upgrade now and I have an Optimus S... I am taking it back tomorrow and getting the EVO and not worry about kernels and the such... thanks so much for the help in doing this... was a great learning experience for me

 

[monster99105]

My optimus s hasn't been rooted before but I installed the update. Will this still work even tho in ur instructions it says ur guessing we have a previously rooted android?

 

[sfhub]

My optimus s hasn't been rooted before but I installed the update. Will this still work even tho in ur instructions it says ur guessing we have a previously rooted android?

If you installed the OTA VC update, then these instructions won't work as is because you can't root an OTA updated VC unit and the instructions depend on you being able to root.

If you want to root, you'll need to revert. Instructions are in my signature.

 

[monster99105]

does this need to be done if im flashing my optimus s to v9 so i can root it? it hasent EVER been rooted b4

 

[sfhub]

does this need to be done if im flashing my optimus s to v9 so i can root it? it hasent EVER been rooted b4

No, you don't need to go through all this if you want to be rooted with V9. After you have V9 installed, you can just use z4root.

However, if you accepted the VC OTA update, and you eventually want to be rooted with VC, then you should at least restore the V9 Recovery partition (steps 26-30 of first post)

 

[psaurus81]

I'm totally lost. I downloaded the files from the OP to my computer, now what? Do they go on the root of the SD card? Do they go into the platform-tools folder in the Android SDK? Help!

 

[ccrs8]

I'm totally lost. I downloaded the files from the OP to my computer, now what? Do they go on the root of the SD card? Do they go into the platform-tools folder in the Android SDK? Help!

They can go wherever you want them to go, as you'll be using adb to push them to your phone. I put them in C:\android, but that's just because I didn't feel like navigating all the way to my Desktop folder in the command prompt or typing the absolute path when pushing the files.

I just did this this morning...followed the steps exactly and worked like a charm.

 

[cmyasika1]

1) Root the Optimus. I assume you are already rooted if you are needing a total system restore.

2) Download GNM's v1.1.0 Recovery Kernel. Please use this recovery and no other as this is the only one I have tested. Use of another recovery kernel may brick your phone! Your recovery is going to be wiped with LG's recovery anyway, so don't risk it!.

3) Download flash_image.

4) Connect your optimus to your PC and prepare for ADB usage.

5) Unzip the recovery kernel and flash_image.

6) adb push recovery-RA-GNM-thunderc-s-1.1.0.img /sdcard/
7) adb push flash_image /data/local/tmp
8) adb shell
9) su
10) chmod 755 /data/local/tmp/flash_image
11) /data/local/tmp/flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery-RA-GNM-thunderc-s-1.1.0.img
12) reboot recovery

Now you should be in GNM's recovery with aqua-colored text. The controls are: Up = VolUP, Down = VolDown, Back = Back, Select = Menu (right of home).

13) Go down to "USB-MS Toggle"
14) Select "USB-MS Toggle SDCard"
15) Download my Stock V8 Nandroid Dump
16) Unzip it into the root of the USB Device/SDCard
17) Safely remove the USB device using your PC OS.
18) Press menu to disable USB-MS Toggle.
19) Press back.
20) Select "Backup/Restore".
21) Select "Nand restore".
22) Select "mem=477M".
23) Select "BCDMRS12-20101122-1915"
24) Press menu to confirm.
25) When the process is complete, DO NOT REBOOT. Nandroid does NOT flash recovery by default, to protect from losing your custom recovery. In this case we WANT to lose it, otherwise we won't be stock, and OTA updates will not work. Therefore we must...
26) adb shell
27) mount /sdcard (if this throws an error about "device or resource busy", just ignore it)
28) cd /sdcard/nandroid/mem=477M/BCDMRS12-20101122-1915
29) flash_image recovery recovery.img
30) reboot

Now you are back to V8 stock! Enjoy!

To upgrade to V9:
Due to the kernel being from V9, the phone thinks the firmware is up to date, so you will NOT be prompted for the OTA update. However, since I have a copy of it, you can manually install it. Heres how:

1) Plug phone into PC
2) Enable USB Mass Storage
3) Download the V8 to V9 update and place it in the root of the USB Device/SDCard as "update.zip" (renaming it is important!)
4) run the following from cmd prompt: "adb reboot recovery"
5) You are now at LG's dark-blue recovery screen (should only be 4 options, if not STOP HERE)

6) Select the option with "update.zip"
7) follow instructions on screen (VERY IMPORTANT)

You now have V9 Radio/Baseband and V9 stock update. You can delete the update.zip from your SDCard when you are back into Android.

To upgrade from V9 to VC:
1) Use the LG Updater.

You now have VC Radio/Baseband and VC stock update. You can delete the update.zip from your SDCard when you are back into android.

To re-root on VC, see this thread.[/QUOTE]

I have a dumb question. Why is it that when I enter the command "flash_image recovery recovery.img", I get "flash_image: permission denied"
I don't understand why? I followed these steps with my optimus and it was successful. I am now trying with my wife's and I can't flash the stock recovery.

 

[cordell]

My phone was restored to V8, the did the update.zip to V9. Now I am trying to use LG Updater and it says I am up to date. Did they pull the update??

 

[sfhub]

I have a dumb question. Why is it that when I enter the command "flash_image recovery recovery.img", I get "flash_image: permission denied"
I don't understand why? I followed these steps with my optimus and it was successful. I am now trying with my wife's and I can't flash the stock recovery.

do you have root privileges ("#" prompt in adb shell) when you issue the flash_image command

 

[xtacocorex]

My phone was restored to V8, the did the update.zip to V9. Now I am trying to use LG Updater and it says I am up to date. Did they pull the update??

I had that too, but it wanted to re-install the USB drivers. Once it did that, I was able to update to VC.

 

[cordell]

I had that too, but it wanted to re-install the USB drivers. Once it did that, I was able to update to VC.

I just tried reinstalling drivers and it didnt work for me, thanks.