Best 'clean up' before flashing ROMs

[Guest The Stkfigure]

WARNING: To most experts this might seem very useless thread and things said might seem very 'obvious' but for newbies it's not. Plus if they do this, it might make only real bug reporting and the fake ones due to bad install might eventually reduce.

Hi Guys,

This thread is solely based on my experience. My experience as a ROM junkie. First mental on WinMos and now on Android. OS has changed but the ROM junkie in me hasn't. No ROM ever satisfies my hunger. I get an itch to try new ROM, just for the sake of it. May be an addiction?

Anyways, no more medical counselling here.

The reason for creating this thread:

In past few weeks while I've tried quite a few new ROMs, I've talked to newbies on various threads. There were issues and bugs. If someone reports a weird bug, I like to see it too, so I flash the ROM. Now most of the times I din't see the 'bug' and sometimes I did! All in all, what I've realised is, due to multiple examples and different countries, hardwares etc for our blades, newbies tend to mix up and get confused. Hence get bugs that shouldn't be there in first place.

The *noob's guide* to clean up:

Make sure first that you've back up your sms/contact/apps.

• SMS can be backed up using various apps from market e.g. SMS back up+
  
• Contacts can be synced directly to your Gmail account.
  
• Apps - I use Titanium back up. But there might be options available e.g. MyBackUp Root . Titanium back up seems to me like 'the' solution. If you pay for it, then it's very easy but if not, you just need longer to restore your apps.
  
  
  These are the things which I wipe and always makes things 'bug' free to me.
  1. Under advanced:
     • Dalvik cache
       

  [*]Under mount and storage:

  • Format /system
    
  • Format /cache
    
  • Format /data
    
  • Format /boot
    
  • If you want to clean your external partition on SD card too, ONLY then format /sd-ext
    

  [*]Under main menu

  [*]wipe user data

  [*]wipe cache

  Most of us already know about dalvik, cache and data - but wiping under mount and storage seems to help me.

  It's not generally needed if you switch from one version to another of the same ROM, but if you want to have a bug free life, please back up everything and wipe everything as above and then make a 'fresh' install.

  No matter where your phone is from, what hardware, what RAM or what camera - if you've cleaned as above and you still see the bugs, then they are real! (unless ofcourse -any particular apps mess up!)

  I've seen this on xda before. If it's not your post, you should give credits.