How To: Gain Permanent Root and S-OFF on the T-Mobile G2 / HTC Vision
November 30, 2010 in Android How To's, Featured, How To's, HTC G2 How To's, Video
I. Before You Begin
1. An explanation of what S OFF is and why you might want it - S Off means security off for your HBoot mode (aka Bootloader). The bootloader is what allows you to flash updates and write to the file system of your phone. By turning the Security OFF, we can flash any updates/ROMs we want without the phone checking to see if it is an official update or not.
2. You MUST have done our Temporary Rooting Method before coming to this method.
II. Flash the S-OFF Hboot Image and Gain Perm Root
1. Download the rooting files:
- HTC G2 (T-Mobile G2/HTC Vision) S-OFF/Rooting Files
- Eng HBoot File (thanks to Doug for sending this in!)
2. Extract the files somewhere to your computer.
3. Plug your phone in via USB cable and mount the SD card so we can transfer files to it.
4. Copy the .ko and .img files from inside the extracted folder from step 2 to the root of your sd card on your phone (NOT in any folders, just on the SD card itself).
5. Unplug the phone.
6. Go to the Market on your phone and download/install Android Terminal Emulator (free).
4. Open the Terminal Emulator app and type the following with hitting enter at the end of each line (to get the touch screen keyboard to come up hit the menu button then toggle soft keyboard):
su
cd /sdcard
insmod /sdcard/wpthis.ko
*After typing the last line, you should see an error saying failed: (function not implemented). If you DO see that, you have done it correctly and can continue.
7. Now, type the following line in the terminal emulator hitting enter at the end of the line.
dd if=/sdcard/hboot-eng.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p18 [the last part is mmcblk(zero)p(one)(eight)]
8. After you have typed the dd line for your specific phone, it should say something was written etc. Now, type the following into the command prompt with hitting enter at the end of each line:
sync
9. After that is done, reboot the phone. When it boots back up, turn it off and back on holding down Volume Down and Power until the HBoot screen comes up. Confirm it says S-OFF at the top. If so, you have S-OFF.
10. Now, to get permanent root, turn the phone back on to get to the normal home screen.
11. Open Visionary and Uncheck TempRoot on Boot and click Temproot Now.
12. Then select Attempt Perm Root Now and the phone should reboot.
13. Once the phone reboots, open Terminal Emulator on the phone and type su and hit enter. If you get the # symbol, you have permanent root access and S-OFF, enjoy!
IV. (Optional) Load a Custom ROM
1. Head to our How To Load a Custom ROM on the T-Mobile G2 / HTC Vision procedure.
Thanks to unforgiven512 for the original how to!
Calvin61887 said on August 18, 2011
nice work man got through the step with no problem Thank Alot
Rshah0521 said on September 11, 2011
Hey Guys,
Do yall know why when I type “Su” it says I don’t have the permission to do so and then it won’t let me proceed?
adam b said on October 2, 2011
does this work on the G2x?