Guide to Hacking Advent Stock ROM Installer

[Guest mattlokes]

Hi Guys,

This is my first topic so be gentle B)

I, like a lot of you are fed up with the BSOD from the clockwork mod, but I feel the advantages of it outweigh the problems. The most annoying thing is reinstalling all

of my settings and application which can be done fairly simply with titanium back-up but that can be to laborious. Also of course installing the clockwork mod again and restoring a NANDroid back-up is an option, however installing the ROM and then the Modaco Mod and then using adb to install the clockwork mod to get to this stage is also a lengthy process.

Below details how to Hack/Mod the Advent stock ROM installer to reinstall your NANDroid backup all in one go!

DISCLAIMER ### This guide is fairly simple and should only be attempted if you know how to "Un-Brick" a Vega using the standard stock installer.

### I will claim no responsibility for anything that might go wrong.

Right lets get on with the guide :unsure:

REQUIRED:

- WinRAR , 7-Zip or any other extraction tool that can open a .exe

- A Clockwork Mod nandroid backup.

- The stock vega ROM installer found on http://www.myadventvega.co.uk/

STEPS:

1. Open up softwareImage_v1.06_05_Vega_Final.exe (stock advent ROM installer) using WinRAR.

2. Replace the system.img contained in the stock installer with the system.img from your NANDroid back-up.

3. Don't want the Clockwork Mod Anymore? Ignore this step! replace recovery.img with recovery.img from your NANDroid back-up

4. Now copy in the data.img image from your NANDroid back-up

5. Finally you need to edit the file flash.cfg in your text editor of choice. I use SCITE as I like the syntax highlighting.

This file contains all the information about the partitions to be created by the NVFlash utility. The only change needed is

under the partition called UDA. Just add "filename=data.img" on the end of the partition section and save. This section should now look like this :

[partition]

name=UDA

id=11

type=data

allocation_policy=sequential

filesystem_type=yaffs2

size=0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

file_system_attribute=0

partition_attribute=0

allocation_attribute=0x10

percent_reserved=0

filename=data.img[/codebox]

6. Finally close WinRAR and rename the .exe so that you know its been hacked.

Now to use you just have to put the Vega into Nvidia Recovery mode by doing the whole hold the BACK button down for 2 seconds thing listed at http://www.myadventvega.co.uk/full_system_...nstructions.pdf. Then just start up the hacked installer! Enjoy :angry:

In working this out I messed up the Vega a few times and it was always recoverable with the Stock ROM installer!

I Hope you guys find this as useful as I have :o

Matt

P.S Cheers Paul for all your work, you are a genius!

[Guest software]

Thank you for sorting this out :unsure: . Creating my own recovery now

[Guest emergant]

Thank you for sorting this out :unsure: . Creating my own recovery now

This is excellent work. I've tested it myself and actually replaced system and boot images. I also added data as described and did the same for cache under the cac section. I'm thinking about trying to do the same for the secure image from clockwork but I'm not sure where it goes. There are two unaccounted for partitions MSC and USP, maybe its one of those?

I think this a great way of protecting your system against BSOD and any other problems and makes clockwork worthwhile in itself

I've been playing with nvflash all afternoon. In theory it can backup the images too, but. I haven't got it working. Its probably not worth the bother.

I was worried about bricking with nvflash but now believe this unlikely because the advent installer contains all the files we should need to flash everything from the most fundamental level. That's not a challenge though and I'm not taking responsibility if someone proves me wrong:)

I think this should be a sticky

[Guest mattlokes]

This is excellent work. I've tested it myself and actually replaced system and boot images. I also added data as described and did the same for cache under the cac section. I'm thinking about trying to do the same for the secure image from clockwork but I'm not sure where it goes. There are two unaccounted for partitions MSC and USP, maybe its one of those?

I think this a great way of protecting your system against BSOD and any other problems and makes clockwork worthwhile in itself

I've been playing with nvflash all afternoon. In theory it can backup the images too, but. I haven't got it working. Its probably not worth the bother.

I was worried about bricking with nvflash but now believe this unlikely because the advent installer contains all the files we should need to flash everything from the most fundamental level. That's not a challenge though and I'm not taking responsibility if someone proves me wrong:)

I think this should be a sticky

Thanks :unsure: I was just fed up of doing all the steps to recover the Vega and thought I'd have a go!

Also with all the chat of trying to remove clockwork without affecting the rest of the system this technique could be used too!

Matt

[Guest boffboff]

Thanks Matt for taking the time to suss it all out and then share the info with us!

Very handy indeed! Thanks again!

Boff

[Guest rvdgeer]

Thanks Matt for taking the time to suss it all out and then share the info with us!

Very handy indeed! Thanks again!

Boff

I managed to automate the rom.exe modification part with a quick and dirty batch file...

(Unpack rom.exe, update config and bat, overwrite/add backup images and create an executable file)

Will post it later if there's any interest...

However I found out you probably can't backup your data partition using adb. I think this is what you need a custom recovery for...

[Guest Sir Gash]

Thanks for this guide, tried it today and it works. Just a couple of notes for anyone else going to try this:

- My SYSTEM.IMG was too big to restore so the flash process failed. I had to modify the size in flash.cfg to match the actual filesize of the one from my nandroid backup. This seems to have worked with no ill effects, so far anyway! BTW, The filesize for my system.img is 125482368 but the original was 125337600 so not much difference

- I find it easier just to extract all files from 'softwareImage_v1.06_05_Vega_Final.exe' to a folder rather than updating the EXE every time using ZIP/RAR/7-Zip etc.. Then you can just update your system.img and data.img when required and run lvds.bat to start the flashing process

Cheers!