How To: Unroot the Motorola Milestone

I. Before You Begin

This is assuming you did our How To Root the Motorola Milestone procedure.

II. ADBRecovery

1. Download ADBRecovery.

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).

2. Head over to this site and download one of the non rooted nandroid backups for your region.

Nandroid Backup Repository (MAKE SURE TO CHOOSE YOUR REGION AND IT SAYS NON ROOTED NEXT TO IT)

3. Extract the contents of the  .zip file you downloaded above somewhere on your computer. Then copy all the files from inside the extracted folder (just the files like “system.img” “boot.img” etc. NOT the folder itself) 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!

13 thoughts on “How To: Unroot the Motorola Milestone”

  1. Roberto Souto

    Hi Unlockr. First of All, well done for all the work, you are an inspiration for 21st century collaboration and sense of community. Congratulations.

    That said, i have some troubles, i don’t know if you can help me.
    Unrooting – the”Nandroid backup repository” is offline, wherelse can i find it? Cant i just backup mine and use it later? how?

    Rooting*** (most important) – i can’t make it work, it always say an error “EOCD something…” and don’t flash at all. Can you help me out on this?

    Thank you and congrats again.

    1. Roberto Suoto,

      Thanks! Really appreciate it!
      1. Yes, you can use your own Nandroid backup to unroot (but this will still mean you have a custom recovery image, which is fine except if you send the phone in for warranty).
      2. Can you be more specific, at what step is that coming up?

  2. Roberto Souto

    Hi Unlockr!
    I don’t really know much about all these things so excuse in advance if i saying something stupid 😉

    2-(more important) In the first part of the ABDrecovery, i install the update.zip in the SD, boot in the recovey mode, but when i choose the update.zip files, it says:

    E: EOCD Marker occurs after start of EOCD
    E: Signature verification failed
    Installation aborted.

    So i cannot go on on rooting. What can i do?

    1- (less important) About unrooting, there is not a way to save your phone atual rom, unrooted state, i don’t know and later just “flash it back” so i can go back to factory original (to send to warranty or just sell it as non modified)? Also, as i said before, the “Nandroid backup repository” link is broken

  3. Roberto Souto

    Hi Unlockr, are you there? I put too much stuff on my question? I ask this because at my first question you answered it very fast, im sorry, i dont want to bother you, i just need badly to use the android wifi-tether for a business presentation.
    Thank you in advance

  4. hi unlockr
    thanks for your great website, can you giveus a new link for “Nandroid Backup Repository ” plz.
    cause its not avalable

  5. Your adbrecovery Zip file is not working in my milestone.i have u foll each step till copying file(inside that adbrecoveryzip ) to sdcard.n i have rebooted in to recovery mode of milestone to apply sd card update but it dint work for me…pl help me out here i have already break by 2 milestone phone n this is my 3 ones……pl send me the new adbrecovery.zip file so i could backup my milestone phone……pl i realy new help….this is not fake…

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