Android: Rooting the Motorola Xoom (Any SW Version) Wifi (UK MZ604)

Pre-requisites:

  • A UK MZ604 Motorola Xoom Wifi (not 3G)
  • An external microSD card in the Xoom
  • A charger – keep this on charge as we dont want to have a power cut half way through flashing an image!!!
  • The following files:   ADB SDK Files    Recovery Image     Xoom-Universal-Root

Procedure:

     1. Prepare the PC

Download and install the necessary drivers to connect the Xoom to our PC – in this example we are using Win7 64 bit but the drivers are universal.

Once the drivers are installed and Xoom connected, you should see something like this in your device manager:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     2. Install and start the adb daemon

Now we need to get the adb files – you  can download the whole sdk and set it up that way but here we are dealing with the “Easy ADB” way – chances are if you’re developing then this guide is not for you anyway!

Extract the SDK files we downloaded in step 1 to C:\SDK_Tools .

Open a command prompt and enter “cd c:\SDK_Tools” then “adb devices” – it will give you a message that the daemon is starting and then an string of characters followed by “device”, we are now good to go:

 

     3. Unlock the bootloader

Extract the recovery file we downloaded in step 1 and put it into your C:\SDK_Tools folder

Enter “adb reboot bootloader” in your cmd window

This will reboot the xoom into the bootloader, showing “Starting Fastboot protocol Support” on the screen.

Enter “fastboot oem unlock”

The following will be displayed in your cmd window:

On your Xoom you will see an information screen and a warning which you need to acknowledge in order to unlock the bootloader; you need to press “Vol down” to change the option to “I accept” or “Yes” and then hit “Vol up” after each choice to proceed.

You will then see the following:

WAIT UNTIL THE DEVICE REBOOTS OF ITS OWN ACCORD!!!

     4. Flash the revovery image

Once rebooted, skip through the setup screen (your tablet is now back to factory defaults), go to Apps -> Settings -> Applications -> Development and enable USB Debugging.

Now back to the cmd window and check we have the device connected with “adb devices”.

Once satisified, enter “adb reboot bootloader” to reboot into the bootloader:

Enter “fastboot flash recovery recovery-Tiamat-R4c-100611-1150-cwm.img”, you should see the following in your cmd window:

 

5. Flash the Universal Root package:

Once in the clockwork recovery, your PC should start installing drivers like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the Xoom:

Using Vol Up/Down to navigate and the Power button to select, go into the “Mounts and Storage” menu and choose “Mount USB Storage” – you should now be able to browse the SD card from your PC.

Place the Xoom-Universal-Root.zip  on the root of the card.

Choose “Unmount” on the menu, then “++++++Go Back++++++” until you are at the root menu.

From here, choose “install zip from sd card”, “choose zip from sd card”, browse to the zip file we just copied over and select it.

You should see the following verification:

Go back to the main menu and choose “reboot now” – the device is now rooted!!

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I take no credit for any of this, it’s just stuff I pieced together from the amazing work done on the dev forums, especially xoom-forums and xda-developers.

Android: ICS on Nexus S – “Unfortunately the setup wizard has stopped”

If anyone has tried flashing the new Cyanogenmod 9 (Alpha 12 at the time of writing) then you may have got to the “Touch android to start” screen and been met with the “unfortunately setup wizard has stopped” error message.

You can bring down the notification window and click on the settings icon, set up your accounts etc but the home page will still come back to the “Touch android ..” page.

To get round this, touch the screen in all 4 corners in a clockwise direction, starting top left – this will bypass the wizard and let you get set up properly, albeit manually. I’ve circled the points in the pic below.

Hope this helps someone ..