How To: Load a Custom ROM on the Motorola CLIQ XT / Quench

I. Before You Begin

1. You must have done our How To Root procedure.

II. Flash a Custom Recovery Image

1. Head to the Market on your device and search for ROM Manager. Install it and select Flash Recovery to flash a custom recovery image, then continue.

III. Load a Custom ROM

1. Head over to our CLIQ XT ROMs section and download the ROM you want to flash.

2. Plug in the phone to the computer and mount the sd card (so we can transfer files to it).

3. Copy the ROM’s .zip file from the computer to the root of the sdcard (NOT inside any folders just on the sdcard itself. Do NOT extract the .zip file, leave it zipped).

4. Once it is done transferring, unplug the phone and turn it off.

5. Turn the phone back on by holding down Camera Button and Power and keep holding it until it says to let go. Then click Volume Down for the recovery screen to come up.

6. Select Wipe Data and do a wipe.

7. Then select Apply Zip and select the ROM file you just saved to the sdcard.

8. Once it is done flashing, select reboot now and wait a while for it to reboot. Once done, you are on your custom ROM.

9. To switch to a different ROM, simply redo Section III only with a different ROM file.

173 thoughts on “How To: Load a Custom ROM on the Motorola CLIQ XT / Quench”

  1. Had a couple problems here. When dealing with the custom recovery image I had trouble with step 3. In particular, after entering su I kept getting “permission denied”. The problem was that the phone needed to be unlocked for su to work. After trying again with the phone unlocked I recieved a little dialog on my phone asking me to grant permission.

    Next problem is with step 4. Typed in the commands exactly and after hitting enter on the last line (rm recovery.img) I get this:

    “rm failed for recovery.img, No such file or directory”

    Anyone know what I might be missing?

    1. Tried this over, trying to get past step 4. I now get the following, after entering rm recovery.img:

      rm failed for recovery, Read-only file system

        1. Hey thanks, I tried that to no avail unfortunately 🙁

          Also I just got a software update from my carrier after doing this and, after downloading the update, it always fails. I end up at the j_r0dd recovery screen telling me the installation was aborted.

          Not sure if I’ve mucked something up here.

          1. hey slwen and the unlockr,

            i have the same issue at step 4, rm failed for recovery.img no such file or directory exists. please share your experience

  2. I couldn’t get it done and was about to give up but I found out what the problem for me was. Whenever I got to #3 and put in “su”, my phone would be asking me for permission. My screen was off so I didn’t figure it out until my phone caught my eyes once. After that, I got it to work. It’s amazing how paying attention can work 😛

    1. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

      This was my problem, and I assume all the other peoples problems here too. You have to look at your phone and allow the access.

      Holy Christ you need to put that in the instructions. Actually, EVERY single instructional I’ve read over the last hour didn’t say a damn thing about this part.

      FML

      1. Ha, well glad you got it to work. I added a note to the procedure to allow superuser (I didn’t originally cause I assumed if someone saw something pop up on their phone, they’d think to look at it… guess not lol) hope that helps some others, thanks for posting the solution to your issue!

  3. So I followed these steps and rm’d the recovery. I went to do a nandroid backup prior to loading a ROM.
    Rebooted and held the power and camera buttons.
    “Release camera button” – done.
    “pick up or down on the volume key.” – pushed down button on volume.
    Then all I get is:
    blue screen that said:

    USB FastBoot: V0.5
    Machine ID: Zeppelin 0a00
    Build Date: xxxxx

    Serial Number:

    ** Security on, fastboot disabled **

    and it was stuck, had to take battery out to do anything with it.

    Where is the recovery?

      1. I have run through this entire process at least 7 different times. All with the same result. I downloaded the recovery.img and placed it into 3 different folders on my computer. Then one at a time, copied the img file to my sdcard, flashed the image and restarted, Blue screen. Then removed the recovery.img from my sdcard and put a different recovery.img on there. I did this just in case the img was corrupted.
        I also did the following make sure it wasn’t a read / write problem with the system.

        adb shell
        $ su
        su
        # mount -o rw, remount -t yaffs2 /system /system/
        Usage: mount [-r] [-w] [-o options] [-t type] device directory
        #flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img
        flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img
        #

        reboot, hold camera, release, push down volume. Blue screen of no recovery.

          1. Did that. Several times. No joy. I tried the other procedure after the one above worked. Maybe my phone has a hardware issue.

  4. OK here is what finally worked.

    1. Copy the .img file (recovery.img) to the root of your SD card
    2. Start your terminal app (I use ConnectBot)
    3. Type su (then press enter)
    4. If asked, answer Yes to grant superuser privileges
    5. Type flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img (then press enter)
    6. Type reboot recovery (then press enter)

    Booted into Jr0dd’s recovery

    1. One more thing… this recovery failed as well, until I backed up the SD card contents onto computer and reformatted the SDcard. Ran the recovery and it worked.

    2. i did that but i got a screen …

      USB fastboot : v0.5
      machine ID: zeppelin 0a00
      build date: apr 27,2010, 15:03:47

      SErial Number: ___________

      (**security on, fast boot disabled **

      Can you help me?

  5. I follow directions well and still couldn’t get the instructions above to work but I followed MulderFoxx’s instructions for rebooting into the recovery and I am doing great. Performing backup as we speak and then flashing a rom on here 🙂

      1. Oh boy, if you looked at my IP activity today, you’d see I’ve been on this site trying to overcome this step for so many hours.

        By the way, thanks for replying to this guy.

  6. i followed your tutorial on rooting, got everything witout errors….almost thru this video n encountered this error while trying to back up ” error: run “nandroid.sh” via adb! “. i dont kno wat that means 🙁 plz help

  7. i’m stuck on blue screen
    USB FastBoot: V0.5
    Machine ID: Zeppelin 0a00
    Build Date: xxxxx

    Serial Number:

    ** Security on, fastboot disabled **
    It will not let me boot again please help

  8. Everything is good untill I get to this line:
    adb push recovery.img /sdcard/recovery.img

    And I get this error, and can’t figure out what the deal is:
    failed to copy ‘recovery.img’ to ‘sdcard/recovery.img’ : read-only file system

    Any help would be great. Thanks

    1. Digital J,

      According to that your sdcard has write protection on it which is odd. Go to settings > Sdcard > then unmount > then format sd card (warning – that will erase everything off your sd card so back it all up to your computer first if you don’t want to lose it).
      Then start the procedure over from the beginning.

  9. Ok, figured out the back-up issue. I didn’t realize I was trying to back up a partition I didn’t have, LOL. Anyway, it’s back-up, loaded the F-22 ROM and everything is awesome!! Got rid of the programs I didn’t want, Barnacle runs GREAT! I was so ready to give up on the Cliq XT. Now it runs faster and smoother than I could have imagined. Thanks to everyone who made this possible. Guess I’ll give this POS a chance. 🙂

  10. need help!!! im all rooted but i’ve been trying to flash custom recovery image and either way(rsd lite, or adb shell)im getting error…no space left on device..i’ve been reading and i hear this could be a case of bad blocks on internal memory..

  11. So i am stuck too. When i unzip the recovery file it shows up in the tools like a zip file.
    when i type in the command adb push recovery.img /sdcard/recovery.img it does nothing at all.
    What am i missing here?

    1. Christoph,

      Unzip the recovery image and it needs to be a .img file inside. THAT is what needs to go into the tools folder, a .zip file in the tools folder won’t work.
      Good luck!

  12. I downloaded the recovery file from the page here, Unziped and it still shows as a zip file. When i try to unzip that file with winzip it says “Error:Internal error processing ISO image.”
    try to open with winrar it says “c:\androidsdk\tools\Recovery.img the file format is either unknown or damaged”
    7 zip says “Cannot open c:\androidsdk\tools\recovery.img as archive”

    So im not sure why but it still shows itself as a zip file after i unzip from CLIQ XT/QUENCH Recovery.

    Win Rar and 7 zip say it is already in “recovery.img” but it will not load to the phone. tried copying to the sd card and its just sits there when using the command “adb push recovery.img /sdcard/recovery.img” the cmd prompt does nothing from there.

    I guess im missing why my computer still shows the .img file as a zip file. Tried it on my laptop and its the same thing there.

  13. ’m stuck on blue screen
    USB FastBoot: V0.5
    Machine ID: Zeppelin 0a00
    Build Date: xxxxx

    Serial Number:

    ** Security on, fastboot disabled **

    rebooting doesnt work, please help

  14. OK I am trying to get this done but I keep getting a error. Everything goes fine until I get to adb shell, when I type adb shell I get a $ . From there I type su but I get this

    su
    bionic/linker/linker.c:1581: ERROR: 574 could not load “libbinder.so”
    bionic/linker/linker.c:1641: ERROR: failed to link su
    bionic/linker/linker.c:1741: ERROR: CANNOT LINK EXECUTABLE “su”

    Any help would be appreciated.

  15. the recovery image seems to be missing. Getting a 404 error. Can you check on that or can someone in the community direct me to an alternate location to download the cliq xt recovery image?

  16. After many failed attempts to boot into custom recovery I did something slightly different. This may have been posted before or I may have not seen this method…but what I did was delete recovery.img from /system then rename the custom recovery to, of course, “recovery.img” and copy that to /system. Finally! able to flash a custom Rom!

      1. it says once you download the zip file you need to extract it…. I can’t get it open. Is there a certain program I should use

          1. i am having the same problem, i downloaded winzip and tried to open it and it said winzp only supports files in iso format

  17. Can someone help,

    I’m trying to flash the new recovery, I do have root access. When rebooting after going through the steps, it goes to a blue screen, no matter if the volume button is pressed up or down. here is what it says

    ’m stuck on blue screen
    USB FastBoot: V0.5
    Machine ID: Zeppelin 0a00
    Build Date: xxxxx

    Serial Number:

    ** Security on, fastboot disabled **

    The first screen before the blue screen is the M with white background, thats what its suppose to be.thanks in advance

  18. MY PHONE BRICK!!!…DAMN i want to know how i can turn on my phone, it stays in the bootloader saying “down button was pressed” and thats it it doesnt start up

  19. ok so when i do the “adb push recovery.img /sdcard/recovery.img”
    part it says “adb is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or bacht file”
    then sends me to C:AndroidSDKtools>
    idk what im doing wrong please help =[

  20. ok so when i do the “adb push recovery.img /sdcard/recovery.img”
    part it says “adb is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or bacht file”
    then sends me to C:AndroidSDKtools>
    idk what im doing wrong please help =[

  21. ok so when i do the “adb push recovery.img /sdcard/recovery.img”
    part it says “adb is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or bacht file”
    then sends me to C:AndroidSDKtools>
    idk what im doing wrong please help =[

  22. You didn’t follow the adb procedure correctly. Go back and redo it. (Also read it carefully and make sure that if you got the new SDK (R08) you need to put ADB in the folder manually, it tells you how if you read).
    Also make sure you don’t have a folder inside your AndroidSDK folder…

  23. You didn’t follow the adb procedure correctly. Go back and redo it. (Also read it carefully and make sure that if you got the new SDK (R08) you need to put ADB in the folder manually, it tells you how if you read).
    Also make sure you don’t have a folder inside your AndroidSDK folder…

      1. I noticed that if after you type in “adb push recovery.img /sdcard/recovery.img” and nothing happens, the reason why is because for some reason, with the newer androidsdk downloads, you have to type in the full path of where the recovery.img is. Example I put all my su, superuser.apk etc into the “platform-tools” folder so instead you would type in

        “adb push C:androidsdkplatform-toolsrecovery.img /sdcard/recovery.img”

        it should work after that, it shouldn’t take forever, 5 sec tops

          1. I had this problem as well and tried following slarowe’s advice but it didn’t work for me. The Cursor continues to flash.

  24. After trying to flash the recovery.img, I’m getting mtd: not writing bad block at (string of numbers) and then at the end it says error writing recovery: No space left on device. I’m confused as I formatted the sdcard so there’s plenty of space and for internal memory I have around 83mb free. Do I need more? Any help would be appreciated.

    1. I am getting the same thing mtd: not writing bad block and then at the end it says error writing recovery No space left on device

    2. I am getting the same thing mtd: not writing bad block and then at the end it says error writing recovery No space left on device

    3. I am getting the same thing mtd: not writing bad block and then at the end it says error writing recovery No space left on device

    4. Same thing here. Got root, superuser, etc. per awesome directions, but go to flash the recovery.img and get the bad block error. I’ve tried two different recovery.img files getting them on to the phone by copying to the sdcard and adb push. Curious though is the adb push doesn’t finish the process, I have to break the command (cntl+c) to get back to a prompt. Really want to get this going, please help.

  25. im scared if i did anything wrong or not…so after i typed ‘su’ and allowed access, this is what happened:
    # flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img
    flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img
    # mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 system
    mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 system
    # cd system
    cd system
    # rm recovery.img
    rm recovery.img
    # exit
    exit
    $ exit
    Is this right so far?

  26. im scared if i did anything wrong or not…so after i typed ‘su’ and allowed access, this is what happened:
    # flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img
    flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img
    # mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 system
    mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 system
    # cd system
    cd system
    # rm recovery.img
    rm recovery.img
    # exit
    exit
    $ exit
    Is this right so far?

  27. This worked perfectly for me. I spent about one hour unrooting and installing the ROM (Adlxmod XT 2.1.54) on my XT.

    The advertised bug about the speaker phone is there and the motofail News widget doesn’t work as before.

    Absolutly, this site unroot and mod methods work for the XT.

  28. Jonanderelizalde

    So I downloaded everything and wiped the memory followed by mounting the custom rom. However, once I rebooted it stayed in the boot page with a black square in the top left corner of the screen and never moved past that… When it did it simply shut off :S. Any ideas or tips?

  29. Jonanderelizalde

    So I downloaded everything and wiped the memory followed by mounting the custom rom. However, once I rebooted it stayed in the boot page with a black square in the top left corner of the screen and never moved past that… When it did it simply shut off :S. Any ideas or tips?

  30. I am sorry to say it did not work for me. Could not get the system folder out of read only and when I tried to load new rom zip it was not available. It took over 4 hours of my time and I never got there and I’m pretty tech savvy, certainly no idiot.

  31. Everytime i type ‘su’ it says permission denied( on both my phone and on the command prompt)
    I have tried turning my phone off but still nothing.. Idk what im doing wrong

  32. im pretty sure i did everything right for the root and recovery process thing but when i try to boot my phone on recovery mode there is just a picture of a a phone and a triangle with an exclamation mark instead of the menu

  33. please help i am stuck on blue screen no matter what i do now and every time i start the phone. i followed above through step five then got the blue screen, i pulled the battery, and then followed this:

    MulderFoxx [Moderator] 4 months ago
    OK here is what finally worked.

    1. Copy the .img file (recovery.img) to the root of your SD card
    2. Start your terminal app (I use ConnectBot)
    3. Type su (then press enter)
    4. If asked, answer Yes to grant superuser privileges
    5. Type flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img (then press enter)
    6. Type reboot recovery (then press enter)

    and now get:

    USB FastBoot: V0.5
    Machine ID: Zeppelin 0a00
    Build Date: xxxxx

    Serial Number:

    ** Security on, fastboot disabled **

    really need help, it is my only phone and i am not working. appreciate it.

  34. For everyone who is having the issue where recovery.img won’t push to your sdcard, make sure that your superuser app is running on your phone when you type the command.

  35. ibeen trying this for a long time now. the first time it was working perfectly but when igot to the su it stated i didnt have enough memory. now ideleted some apps but its not letting me past the adb push recovery.img…. someone wanna help me here. my phone is like really slow now &ineed to try this.

  36. ibeen trying this for a long time now. the first time it was working perfectly but when igot to the su it stated i didnt have enough memory. now ideleted some apps but its not letting me past the adb push recovery.img…. someone wanna help me here. my phone is like really slow now &ineed to try this.

  37. now im really mad; it went through but after the “su” it did whole long row of
    mtd: not writing bad block at 0x0020000 & then error writing recovery: No space left on device.
    what do ido.?

  38. so in the video you say to do a back up, once you load the custom rom, do you have to load all your apps, contacts and everything? Or are you able to get that from the back up that we did? What all would I loose not doing a back up and just loading the custom rom. Sorry kinda new to this and just want to know what I’m going to have to do when I load a rom,

  39. i went through the process and i though i did it right but now when i the load any rom i only get the notifications and the home screen and keys dont work is there a fix?!?!

  40. Hi– I followed your video for one-click rooting and now have superuser on my phone. My problem now is I can’t install the ROM manager app from the market (downloads, then gives me “installation unsuccessful” message). I’ve just emailed the dev, hopefully they have a solution. If not, is there a way to install a ROM manually after a one-click root? I know nothing at all about this process and am too terrified to dink around on my own without knowing exactly what I’m doing.

    Thanks

  41. I get stuck after cd system then when i type rm recovery.img it says… “rm failed for recovery.img, no such file or directory found?

  42. I get stuck after cd system then when i type rm recovery.img it says… “rm failed for recovery.img, no such file or directory found?

  43. Irate BRIQ XT owner.

    Blues Screen FIX: If you are flashing the recovery image and get write errors (bad blocks) and it gets stuck in the blue screen and cannot flash the original ROM back with RSDLite and your phone is still under manufacturer warranty, just call up your provider and have them send you a new one. I had a new CLIQ XT within 7 days and had the whole thing re-rooted and ROMmed in not time.

  44. Well Bummer…Everything was going great until I typed in the flash_image command at the end of step #3.

    All I get is:
    mtd: not writing bad block at
    This repeats several times and finally ends with
    error writing recovery: No space left on device

    I’ve read through the comments and haven’t seen any answers other than speculation regarding bad memory.

    Any help?

    1. seems the device is low on ram…
      everytime memory is involved its always about ram…

      try killing some apps and try again

  45. I have the motorola me501 in China, which seems to be the same phone. I have done everything up to loading the new rom successfully. I had a little trouble removing the old recovery image but I think I did it. When I tried to load first the basically blurless rom and then I tried the moto blur rom. It said it could no open the files and then it said (BAD). When I started up the phone it was back to the factory settings. Any Ideas where I went wrong?

  46. when i type flash_image recovery.img /sdcard/recovery.img in the command prompt it says cant find recovery.img partition. help PLEASE?!

  47. How long is the pushing of the image supposed to take? In your video, it took no more than 5 seconds…I’m getting close to the hour mark. What happened? I unblocked the image in it’s properties, was I not supposed to?

  48. I downloaded the recovery file and it is not a zip file. I added it to the sdk tools file like you say in the video and the file can not be found. What do I do?

  49. i have a problem with the last step rm recovery.img
    when I press enter is say rm failed for recovery.img No such file or directory

  50. is this what i should have gotten after i made sure the recovery didnt get put back in?

    rm failed for recovery.img no such file or directory.

  51. Great guide. Only issue I have is that my volume rocker does not work so I can’t select anything. Water damage so I can’t send it in. Anyone know if there is a way to load the rom through the command prompt or use a hard keyboard somehow?

  52. I get to the last step.
    rm recovery.img
    rm failed for recovery.img, No such file or directory.
    Any ideas?

  53. after i turned the phone back on it stays on a page with a triangle and a cell fone did i do it wrong ?? 

  54. After I turn my phone back on and push the volume down button I get a Warning Triangle next to a phone??? 🙁 Idk what the problem could be

  55. im stuck on step one! it tries to burn it to the D Drive, is that right? but than it says invalid image or some shit like that. what do i do?

  56. when im up to the rm recovery.img  part
    it says rm failed for recovery.img no such file or directory. why? can someone help?

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