How to Flash a Custom Recovery on the Sony Xperia Z1

So you got your Xperia Z1 rooted and now wish to flash a custom ROM? Great! Root is meant to be used at its fullest and a custom recovery will let you do so. Fortunately the Xperia Z1 is blessed with the CWM Recovery so you can enjoy all those custom ROMs available for your device without much hassle. Without further ado, here’s how you can flash a custom recovery on your Xperia Z1:

I. Before You Begin:

1. You must be rooted before you can do this procedure. Please head to our How to Root the Sony Xperia Z1 procedure first, finish it, then return to this procedure and continue.

2. You must have unlocked bootloader of your device. You can do so by visiting the official bootloader unlock website.

3. This works on 518 and 526 firmwares only. Do NOT try this on any other firmware versions.

II. Downloading Required Files:

1. Stock Kernel (Download the appropriate kernel from the first post)

2. Fastboot

III. Flashing a Custom Recovery on the Sony Xperia Z1:

1. Download and place both the files on your Desktop.

2. Extract files from the Fastboot archive over to your Desktop.

3. Enable the USB debugging option on your device by heading to Menu>>Settings>>Developer options>>USB debugging.

4. Once it’s been enabled, plug in your device to your PC via USB cable.

5. Open a Command Prompt Window on your Desktop. To do that, simply hold down the Shift button and right-click anywhere on your Desktop and choose Open command window here.

6. Type in following command into the Command Prompt Window you just opened:

adb reboot bootloader

7. Your device should reboot into the bootloader mode.

8. Now issue the following command to flash the stock kernel on your device:

fastboot flash boot adv-stock-v3.img

9. Once it’s been flashed, issue the following command to reboot your device into the newly installed CWM Recovery:

adb reboot recovery

10. You should now be in Recovery mode.

11. You’re all set!

Great! Your device has been successfully flashed with the CWM Recovery to help you flash ROMS and various Mods available for your device!

IV. Flash a Custom ROM (Optional):

1. If you are ready to flash custom ROMs on your device, head to the How To Flash a Custom ROM on the Sony Xperia Z1 to learn how to do that.

If this procedure helped you please thank/donate to the original developers here.

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