How to Unroot the HTC 10 & Get Back to Stock (Video)

It happens to all of us. Sometimes there comes a time when you need to unroot your HTC 10. Maybe you messed it up with flashing too many custom ROMS, maybe you just want to sell it, or maybe you need to return it to HTC for warranty? Regardless of the reasoning, unrooting the HTC 10 will get it back to stock and the way it was when it first came out of the box.

First up, this wasn’t the easiest video to do. Turns out that HTC has a billion versions of the HTC 10 and the tool that is recommended (you’ll see why in the video) to unroot the phone isn’t available for most of them. Because of this, I’m going to show you how to use that tool, then some alternative methods for unrooting in case you can’t find it for your phone.

 

I. Before You Begin

1. This will erase your phone.
2. You will need a Windows computer for some of this.
3. I’m going to assume you did my rooting tutorial. If you didn’t please just use my setup ADB tutorial and do that so you have the proper tools on your computer and in the right places (don’t worry, it’s a 60 sec tutorial).
4. Enable USB debugging (if it isn’t already enabled) by going to Settings > About Phone > Software and tapping on Build Number until it tells you you are a developer. Then hit back twice and go to Developer Options, and turn on USB debugging.

II. Find Your CID

So first thing we need to do is find our CID number, this is an identifier of our model and we need to know it in order to flash the right firmware.

1. Head to the Play Store and download CID Getter.
   
2. Open it and you’ll see your CID at the top of the screen.
   

III. Use the RUU for Your HTC 10

A. RUU Exe Method

So ideally, the best way to revert to stock is to use an RUU, or ROM Update Utility, directly from HTC. If you can find one for your CID, then that is the best way to go.

1. Head to this site and check if there is an RUU for your CID under the Stock RUU Exe section.
   
2. Plug in the phone via USB and double-click the RUU exe file.
   
3. Follow the prompts for it to flash your phone.
   

B. RUU Zip Method

If you couldn’t find the RUU exe for your phone, you might be able to find the RUU zip file and flash that.

1. Head to this site and check if there is an RUU for your CID under the RUU Zip section (here I have the North American RUU version, European RUU version, and Asian RUU version).
   
2. Download it and save it to your desktop, rename it to the 2PS6IMG.zip (if you downloaded it directly from me, I’ve already renamed it for you).
   
3. Plug in the phone via USB and copy it to the root of the internal storage.
   
4. Unplug the phone and turn it off. Turn it back on by holding down Volume Up and Power.
   
5. Push Volume Up to begin it flashing and wait for it to finish.
   

If you found the RUU for your phone, then you can skip to VII. If you couldn’t find it for your phone, then continue with section IV below.

IV. Download the TWRP Backup, Stock Recovery, and OTA for your HTC 10

1. Using the CID you got above, head to this page on XDA and find the TWRP backup for that CID and download it and save it to the adb folder.
   
2. Then find and download the Stock Recovery for your CID and save it in the same place and rename it to stockrecovery.
   

V. Restore the Backup

First, we need to restore the stock backup for the device by restoring it in the TWRP recovery. In order to do that we first need to make a backup in TWRP to setup the correct file structure so if you have never made a backup do the next section, if you have done one at some point in the past then you can skip it and do the next section.

A. Backup the Phone to Create the File Structure

1. Turn off the phone and turn it back on by holding down Volume Down and Power.
   
2. Using the volume buttons to navigate and the power button to select, choose Boot to Recovery Mode.
   
3. When in recovery, tap on Backup and swipe to confirm.
   
4. Then tap reboot system to get back to the normal Android home screen.
   

B. Restore the Downloaded Backup

1. Plug the phone in via USB while in the normal Android system (your normal home screen) and open the phone’s storage on the computer and navigate to BACKUP > [Your device’s serial number folder] on the device storage.
   
2. Extract the .zip file we downloaded of the TWRP backup and copy the extracted folder into the above folder.
   
3. Turn off the phone and turn it back on by holding down Volume Down and Power.
   
4. Select Boot into Recovery Mode.
   
5. Once in recovery, tap on Restore then choose that backup file and swipe to confirm (this will erase everything on the phone).
   
6. After that’s done, tap Reboot System.
   
7. When it reboots, turn it off and boot it into fastboot by holding down Volume Down and Power.
   

VI. Flash the Stock Recovery

Now that we are back to the stock ROM, we need to flash the stock recovery.

1. Rename the stock recovery to stockrecovery and move it into the adb folder we’ve been using.
   
2. With the phone plugged in, type the following into the command prompt with hitting enter at the end of the line:
   fastboot flash recovery stockrecovery.img
   

VII. (Optional) Lock the Bootloader

If you didn’t use Sunshine to get S-Off and instead unlocked your bootloader via the HTC site, you need to relock the bootloader.

1. Type the following after that last line in the last section to lock the bootloader back up.
   fastboot oem lock
   

All set! Let me know if you had any issues in the comments below. If you couldn’t find your CID in the list of files on XDA, you can Google around to find it and follow this tutorial (just be very careful not to flash the wrong one).