How To: Load a Custom ROM on the Motorola Milestone (Using Nandroid)
March 29, 2010 in Android How To's, Featured, How To's, Motorola Milestone How To's, Video
I. Before You Begin
This is assuming you did our How To Root the Motorola Milestone procedure.
II. ADBRecovery
1. Download ADBRecovery.
2. Extract it’s contents to somewhere on your computer.
3. Plug your phone in normally and mount the SD card (so we can transfer files to it from our computer).
4. Copy the just the update.zip file and the folder named “recovery” from inside the ADBRecovery > in_sd_root folder that we extracted earlier to the root of the SD card in your phone (NOT in any folders on the sd card just on the sd card itself).
5. Turn off your phone.
6. Turn the phone back on while holding the Camera button down until the ! screen comes up.
7. Once the ! comes up, let go of the Camera button and then hold down Volume Up and press the Camera button until a menu appears.
8. Choose apply sdcard:update.zip and wait for it to flash the update.
III. Performing a Nandroid Backup Through ADB
1. Leaving your phone in recovery mode after it flashes the update.zip, plug it in to your computer via USB cable.
2. On your computer, open the command prompt (Start >Type in cmd and hit enter).
3. In the command prompt type the following with hitting enter at the end of each line:
cd\
cd AndroidSDK\tools\
adb shell
nandroid-mobile.sh –backup
*the — in the last line above is actually two hyphens side by side
4. Once it is done with the backup, type the following and hit enter:
reboot
5. Let the phone reboot into normal mode.
IV. Download A Nandroid Backup to Restore and Flash It
1. Plug your phone into the computer via USB cable and mount the SD card (so we can transfer files to it).
1. Head over to the Milestone ROMs section on our site and choose a ROM you want to flash and download it to your computer (PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THEY ARE NOT IN UPDATE.ZIP FORMAT AND CAN ONLY BE FLASHED VIA NANDROID).
2. Extract the contents of the .zip file you downloaded above somewhere on your computer. Then copy all the files from inside the extracted folder into the nandroid > console=ttyS2,115200n8 > Milestone-BbCcDMRS-20100329-2033 folder (your exact names of the folders may be different) on your SD card. Then hit yes to Copy and Replace on all the files.
4. Unplug the phone once it has finished transferring the files over.
5. Turn off your phone.
6. Turn the phone back on while holding the Camera button down until the ! screen comes up.
7. Once the ! comes up, let go of the Camera button and then hold down Volume Up and press the Camera button until a menu appears.
8. Choose apply sdcard:update.zip and wait for it to flash the update and then plug the phone in to your computer via USB cable.
9. Open the command prompt again and type the following with hitting enter at the end of each line:
cd
cd AndroidSDKtools
adb shell
nandroid-mobile.sh –restore
*the — in the last line above is actually two hyphens side by side
10. Once it is done with the restore, type the following and hit enter:
reboot
11. DONE!
Florian Rohrweck said on April 1, 2010
Is it just me or are the custom roms empty the battery faster than RWJ’s alcoholic dad a bottle of scotch?
10 hours are max in standby! Maybe some of the apps I had running before I updated lead to massive power-consumption in combination with the new roms…
anyone had exp. with that yet?
Florian Rohrweck said on April 7, 2010
Nevermind, a factory reset did the trick…
jackywu said on April 18, 2010
I have motorola milestone shipped with android 2.1… can I load the custom roms so that I can root it?
carlos o said on April 19, 2010
will this work for the moto droid too?
TheUnlockr said on April 19, 2010
Carlos,
No, different procedures.
Caid said on April 21, 2010
It seems most sites say it’s impossible to overclock the milestone because of hardware security. Does this bypass it? These custom roms, are they based on the same kernal with different features, or can you load custom kernals on it too?
I’d really like to know if this trick allows the use of overclocking programs for the milestone.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
-Caid.
444
Tony said on April 21, 2010
Will this work for the Telus Milestone? I thought custom roms can’t be run on a locked bootloader
TheUnlockr said on April 21, 2010
Tony,
No we can’t flash a recovery image on a locked bootloader. But we can use Nandroid to flash ROMs instead of a recovery image. This procedure will work fine (make sure you do the How To Root the Milestone first though).
David said on July 25, 2010
Can you use any ROM? Like, could I use Cyan’s for Droid?
David Cogen said on July 25, 2010
David,
You can use any in our Milestone ROMs section only.
Caid said on April 21, 2010
Again, will this allow a different kernal to be loaded?
Caid said on April 24, 2010
Just another shot here hoping to find out if overclockable roms are loadable on the device yet.
Is it so?
-Caid.
TheUnlockr said on April 24, 2010
Caid,
I don’t know about overclockable ROMs (as that would involve flashing the kernel and don’t think you can do that yet), BUT custom ROMs are available.
evmunro said on February 19, 2011
u can download “Milestone overclock” from the market.
works like a charm
enjoy
Matt said on April 28, 2010
Hi,
When i did backup with nandroid i had 8 files and md5 checksum and when downloaded this custom rom: Europe Android 2.1 w/ Root and QWERTZ Layout
by Bavilo it only has 4 files and md5 checksum.
So the question is, should I leave all of mine backup files and just overwrite the ones from this rom, or,
should I just put the ones from custom rom(4files and md5) and then do a restore….
Thanks in advance for answer!
tony said on May 11, 2010
Just wondering if you could do a metamorph tutorial for milestone 2.1? And a place to download metamorph themes. They are hard to come by
harsha said on June 1, 2010
PLZZZZ help me ive flashed using nandroid by french cutom rom n my milestone is in infinite boot loop………pllzzzz help me!!!!!!!!
i stay in INDIA!!!!
Ash said on June 23, 2010
Hey buddy! i have already rooted my milestone 2.1 (Singapore) and i wish to load a custom ROM. could you please guide me on which milestone ROM to use from the 3 given in the tutorial? and anyway do i get to install apps on my SD card after loading a custom ROM?
emailoverhere said on July 18, 2010
Hello Ash.
Yes, I am thinking of getting the Singapore edition of the Milestone.
Do you know if the Taiwan rom (http://sholes.id.au/downloads/) will work with this model?
The salesman had no real working model so he could not confirm whether the Milestone Singapore model can support Traditional Chinese character right out of the box. Can you?
The Milestone XT looks good too but I’m scared that Android 2.2 won’t be available for it.
Any suggestions?
gadi said on August 9, 2010
Backup:
Can i do ADB BACKUP will the phone is up? not in recovery mode?
cd AndroidSDK\tools\
adb shell
nandroid-mobile.sh –backup
thanks
Kevin said on August 12, 2010
I hope someone can help me. I’ve used the above method for backing up my phone and to load custom roms without too many problems. However, when I went to do it today, I get an error and I don’t know why.
When the phone is in recovery mode and I go to apply “update.zip,” it will not load. Instead it says “Signature verification failed” and “Installation aborted.”
Now, the only thing I can attribute this to is the recent Over the Air update from Motorola that I installed. Could this be causing the problem I’m having? If so, what can I do to fix it? If not, what is my problem?
Thanks in advance for any assistance that people can provide.
Nik said on September 22, 2010
cant flash my milestone it says installation aborted and signature verification failed
please help me
Nikmago said on November 8, 2010
it keeps telling me E:Can’t open /cache /recovery /command and E: signature verification failed Installation aborted
TheUnlockr said on November 8, 2010
The first error about commands, ignore. That is fine. The second one means the file is corrupt. Redownload it and try again.
Mathewss14 said on February 20, 2011
does dis work on 2.1?
Mathewss14 said on February 20, 2011
does dis work on 2.1?
Ilani said on March 15, 2011
the new 2011 roms are are in a different format than the video, there is a boot file and two folders, so when i copy over to sd card, i overwrite only one file, is this right? can i load these roms with nandroid without any problems, or are they ment for a different method?
Nikko Smith said on March 21, 2011
I was just told that theunlockr suspected that you’re on 2.0.1 – so if you’re not ^all that won’t work^ you need to downgrade to 2.0.1 before you’re able to load a custom rom…. < if that's not right – tell my how to make it work
Dwmead86 said on April 10, 2011
I have read through the tutorials ten times now how to root my phone and load a rom, im not getting anywhere. I have an A854 Milestone, but it is an Alltel CDMA version, not GSM. Do i just follow the steps for the CDMA droid? I’m lost here, and I would really like to get froyo on my phone.
MarkyPee said on May 18, 2011
I also notice that NONE of the links to any of the ROM’s (or at least none of the ones I’ve tried. A fair few) have no ‘nandroid.md5′ file in them?…
I think this is where I’m failing my install. Where can I find a link to a Cyanogenmod 7 with all the .img files and a nandroid.md5 file? I can’t find any!
I have a locked bootloader so can’t install ROM’s any other way.
wayne said on May 31, 2011
after i chose apply sd card: update.zip then the screen shows
Installing form sdcardFinding update package…Opening update package…Verifying update package…
E:No signature (302 files)
E:Verification failedInstallation aborted.need help! what should i do ?
wayne said on May 31, 2011
ignore the 1st 1.. it’s actually
install from sdcard…
finding update package…
opening update package…
verifying update package…
E:EOCD marker occurs after start of EOCD
E: signature verification failer
Installation aborted
Machees2008 said on August 26, 2011
i was changing my rom for my milestone n once my rom was installing boom it rebooted im all like yes it worked n then look my phone doesent startup i left it on all last night n it still doesent startup it just show the motorola logo M so now im screwed any one kno how to fix it
Sourabh Roddey said on November 11, 2011
There are no img files in Roms that I download. There are only two folder(META-INFsystem) and one boot.img
There are no images to replace the back I made.
Dhull_fiqar said on December 21, 2011
Not getting the exclamation mark….