Database Users

Another Failed Rootig/ possibility to restore to factory settings?

Hi mates!
Recently a friend of mine provoked me to root the NST i had for a month or something like. Followed this simple instruction - nookdevs[d]com/Nook_Simple_Touch/Rooting/Manual and messed things up quite badly:
I did backup before running SD with noogie.img which gave me the small .img of around 250mb. Well i thought that this is it and didn't dance while there was time to make backup on noogie step. At the point of restart the reader didn't reboot properly and i thought that writting backup image will bring back the happines. Obviously i was wrong and doing dd if=backup.img of=/dev/sdc wiped /boot and other crucial partitions of the system. So i can't do any tricks with reseting configs.
I've read some threads out here and the situation brings me to conclusion that i have a brick in my hands. But i thought that somehow there might be something else? Any ideas? Any chance to get original files of the system used for NST?
I've already tried Touch-Formatter and it didn't work out - just stuck on rebooting after installing .zip
Yeah more or less this is it.

From the size of 250M I'd guess that you backed up the /media partition.
Writing it back to your nook wiped out your /boot, /rom, and /factory partitions.
You'll have to copy a full image from somewhere.
You'll have to either copy somebody's personal info or fudge it.

Renate NST said:
From the size of 250M I'd guess that you backed up the /media partition.
Writing it back to your nook wiped out your /boot, /rom, and /factory partitions.
You'll have to copy a full image from somewhere.
You'll have to either copy somebody's personal info or fudge it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
and see this post
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=30454593&postcount=24
after everything going ok , try have a right backup (about 1.9GB)
good luck

Thanks mates for all the advices. Eventually 1.9GB image was the perfect solution for my problem:
1.Wrote noogies.img on MicroSD card
2.Plugged in NST with noogie card inside
3.Wrote 1.9GB image to the nook itself (not quite sure if two previous steps are acutally necessary but just to have it )
4.Switched on NST without noogie card.
And got everything working perfectly. As i didn't have any unique data for my NST, i just skipped registration. No problems so far. - to make clear i don't use B&N store as i leave in a really poor country where nobody has proper credit cards to buy anything in internet...)))
And after that rooted my NST in proper way and now everything looks fine!
Cheers!
PS. If somebody needs this 1.9GB for NST - just pm me, i will upload it somewhere and share it with you on condition that you won't register you nook - not to set up the person who shared the image (although i'm quite sure he is also not going to buy any books on B&N)

[Q] Nook Simple Touch (1.1.2) Not Working After Failed Backup Restore

My Nook Simple Touch (1.1.2) is now not working because I wiped ALL the partitions before attempting to restore a backup (which I didnt know was bad at the time)
Notes
1. I have two backups:
a) the first is 239mb which contains my ebooks and pdfs
b) the second is the boot partition (77mb) - I backed up again when when noogie was on micro SD
2. So basically (both backups) I backed up the NST without selecting the whole physical drive.
3. After a failed root, I tried to restore the backup (and seeing it fail), I decided to wipe the whole partition before attempting to restore again :crying:
4. Are there any restorable backup images that can be downloaded online? Or anything which can restore the partition table including the ROM partition with the serial address etc.
5. Please help me restore the Nook back to factory or any working state. Cos AFAIK i've bricked the device.
p.s. I have tried touchnooter and installed touchformatv2 but all I get now is a Read Forever load screen. N2Tsecurity doesnt work without the ROM partition.
Please Please Help Me Im so sad (I know this is down to carelessness on my part but I really need help)

Did you really wipe all the partitions (like write zeroes over the entire physical drive)?
Or did you just try to repartition it?
The question is whether you truly wiped out the /rom and /factory partitions.
Sometimes partitioning them correctly you can rediscover the file system.
The /rom partition is necessary, even ClockworkMod needs to be able to see it.
The /rom info is replicated in /factory/rombackup.zip

Renate's solution may work.
Also, there is a tool called testdisk available for linux that I've used to recover data and partition layouts before; I would expect that it may work a champ for situations like yours.
To use it, you would need a linux box or find a windows port and boot the NSTG or NST from the noogie disk.
Testdisk can recover deleted partitions automatically, including the all-important /rom partition.
That one's important because it contains device-specific info for your NST. It'll do it automatically, but you do need to read up on what commands to give it. You can also rebuild the table manually using fdisk (and I've done so successfully before.)
A windows file recovery utility might let you recover /rom as well (or the files from it.)
You most need the contents of /devconf, and there are lots of files there. I am not sure which ones are absolutely required.

[Q] Cloning Nooks Simple Touch rooted ?

Hello,
we already have 3 Nooks in the family, all of them rooted. One with Touchnooter on 1.1 about a year ago, two of them with Nookmanager on 1.2 and 1.2.1.
There are more to come for friends, so I wanted to know if there is a possibily to use the Nookmanager backup and change the B&N and Google account setting later on ?
I did them individually so far, as from memory I thought they are individual to some degree, but it get's a bit inefficient.
A) Is cloning in my case possible?
Another thing:
B) Could I update from 1.2 to 1.2.1 without going through the whole process again ? I tried making a backup with Nookmanager, reset to factory, manual update, restore backup - but after restoring the backup it shows 1.2 again. Maybe it's not worth the hassle (?)
Thanks for your help !

It's certainly possible, but I haven't done it so take this advice with a grain of salt.
Before you try any of this, please take a complete backup of the your device with NookManager so if you completely mess up your partitions, you'll still be able to restore your device to a working state. As you've noticed, NookManager does a complete backup of the entire Nook memory, so restoring a backup will take your device back to the exact state it was in at the the time of the backup, including firmware version, partition table, user data, etc. No matter how messed up your Nook is, your backup will get you back in the clear. You do not want to restore a backup made with NookManager to a different device, so with multiple devices make sure you've got your backups identified.
The Nook's internal memory is divided into seven partitions (1-7): boot, rom, factory, system, userdata, cache, and data
What you're looking to do is a backup/restore of selected partitions, which is do-able but you'll need to get your hands dirty. You'll want two SD cards, one with the NookManager, and one for your 'clone' backups.
I think you'll probably want to backup/restore the boot, rom, and system partitions while leaving factory, userdata, cache, and data alone.
To backup select partitions from your 'master' Nook, insert your 'backup' sdcard and use adb to run the following commands:
dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p1 of=/sdcard/p1
dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 of=/sdcard/p2
dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p4 of=/sdcard/p4
This will create three files on your sdcard: p1 p2 and p4 containing the data from the boot, rom, and system partitions, respectively.
Use the NookManager card to boot the Nook you want to clone to, enable wireless and enable adb. Make a backup now if you do not already have one for this Nook. Remove the NookManager sdcard, insert the backup sdcard, and run the following commands with adb:
mount -t vfat /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 /sdcard
ls /sdcard # make sure you see the p1 p2 and p4 images
umount /system
umount /data
umount /cache
umount /rom
dd if=/sdcard/p1 of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p1
dd if=/sdcard/p2 of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p2
dd if=/sdcard/p4 of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p4
umount /sdcard
sync
reboot
If that works, your Nook should reboot and be very similar to your master device. If this is something you plan to be doing regularly, you can work the backup/restore procedures into scripts, and run them as a custom plugin for NookManager (details here). That way you'll just need the one SD card and you won't have to fuss with all the adb commands.
Good luck, and be sure to post your results when you've got this working.

Thanks a lot for that. I will get my sisters Nook on Thursday. She wants an update to 1.2.1, Relaunch and NoRefesh anyway. So I will make a Nookmanagerbackup, then update to 1.2.1 and then copy the partitions you suggested. I will let you know how that goes.
I have do admit that I already bricked a NSG, but the mistake was not doing my noogie backup correctly. With Nookmanager I fell a lot safer doing all this.
As I'm leaving user data alone I hope to keep the connection to google play and B&N intact with the old settings.

Hello. I have a problem. I've rooted my NST and after 2 months i wanted to get back it to stock so I've deleted all partitions on my Nook and then i realized my backup is wrong (it has only 245mb). Now i have intetnion to buy a 2nd NST and fix 1st one. How I can do it? Can I simply make a (proper) backup new NST and restore using it my old NST? I've readed other post and i know there might be a problem with registatrion. Is there any way to fix my nook using backup from antoher device and how cen i do this? Plese help and sorry for my english.

darksd87 said:
Hello. I have a problem. I've rooted my NST and after 2 months i wanted to get back it to stock so I've deleted all partitions on my Nook and then i realized my backup is wrong (it has only 245mb). Now i have intetnion to buy a 2nd NST and fix 1st one. How I can do it? Can I simply make a (proper) backup new NST and restore using it my old NST? I've readed other post and i know there might be a problem with registatrion. Is there any way to fix my nook using backup from antoher device and how cen i do this? Plese help and sorry for my english.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi darsd87,
Yes you will be able to fix your nook using the 2nd.
But, have another way to do this.
I do the same mistake, but my device is a NST Glowlight. I think you can do a backup of your nook now and try to recover using NSTG just in case. In the worst case you can overwrite your backup.
Considering what I do to recover, I sugest you do this steps:
1. create a image backup of NST.
2. recover the ROM partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard
3. write the NSTG backup image
4. copy the ROM partition to NSTG image
5. do a hard reset
The instructions and the backup image of NSTG are available in:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2104145
If some post a image of NST without the rom partition would be better.
But, i think the only "problem" you will have is a useless glowlight button in the nook menu.
Best luck!
PS: sorry for my english... i´m from Brazil.

Thank you very much You saved my nook. I didn't have room partition so i've just used NSTG-backup-norom.img and then made a hard reset. I've registered my nook and now it stuck on the glow light screen "Give it a try" I'm pressing n button for 2 seconds but nothing happen co i can't move on. I can only turn on screensaver or turn off device. Is there any way to skip this screen? I think this is the last step of registering because when i restart nook the registration process starts again (only this time skips logging)
Edited.
I skiped registration using "Oobee method" and when I go to device info menu --> About Your NOOK it seems to be registered on me. Now the only thing what doesn't work is Screen menu, when I tap the screen button the screen flash once and nothing happen. Also i don't have internal storage but I think I can fix it using this method: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1374777. I have one more question. How I can unroot my nook? Hard reset doesn't work. My nook is still rooted. (I have *Development menu in settings and access to android launcher)

[Q] Questions regarding the two NST rooted with the same process

I rooted two nooks, and made tar backups of their partitions (I also got the dd image just in case). Out of curiosity, and with the goal of keeping minimal backup and increasing the partition for side-loaded contents to maximum, I tried to compare the contents of each partition. Since I followed the same process for rooting (Touch-Formatter v2, 1.2.1 update, NookManager, NTGAppsAttack - but before booting the Nook I got the backup), I guessed quite a lot of them are the same, and found some interesting results.
1. Boot partition is nearly the same except uRamdisk. I inspected the contents of the two uRamdisk files using bootutil by Renate, and they are identical.
-> Why are they different, and can one replace the other?
2. As we all know, rom partitions are different, but it looks only a few of them can meaningfully affect the operation. Anyway, it's small and I decided to leave them untouched and keep two separate copies.
-> What is the BCB file by the way? It just has zeroes inside. Is it automatically created if not there?
-> Some files in the devconf directory seem to be modified during the normal process or firmware update, notably BootCnt (four zero bytes), Bq275020Dffs (12 in the rombackup.zip, 13 after 1.2.1 update). What are these? Any idea?
3. The factory partition, I want to bust it (empty it up and resize it to the minimum), and let me know if I'm on a dangerous path. The idea is that I don't need rombackup.zip because I can revive the rom partition with my own tar backup if something bad happens, and it's out of date anyway after 1.2.1 update (some files in the rom partition are modified). Also, with Touch-Formatter and CWM, I wouldn't need the factory.zip file.
-> What are the files in the "touch" directory? One of my nook has them, but the other doesn't. Looking at the data inside they must be related to the display or touch screen. Maybe byproduct of calibration?
-> Can I use 1.2.1 update file with CWM instead of using Touch-Formatter, bringing it to a new fresh 1.2.1 Nook? According to this post, it seems possible.
4. The system partitions are identical, as expected. but with CWM recovery, we wouldn't need a backup of it, right?
5. The cache partition is way too big. I know the firmware update uses this space (when I resized it to something like 64MB, 1.2.1 update didn't work. I needed to increase it to something like 128MB to make it work). However, for normal operation, we surely don't need it that big.
-> How small can it be? I know it depends on individual's usage patterns... but in my case, I mostly use Nook for reading side-loaded contents. I've gone down to 32MB, but I guess that's still big.
-> Do we really need the cache partition? Can we just symlink it to somewhere in the data partition?

Out of curiosity, I just deleted BCB and BootCnt in the rom partition, and rebooted. First it said "Install Failed", a screen I have never seen before on Nook. So I looked into the rom partition and found that BCB file is recreated, but not BootCnt. On the subsequent boot, it said "Installing Rom", and then quickly rebooted. Now it's back to work. So, I guess these two files are essential for normal operation. Again, this time I deleted all files in the factory partition and also deleted BootCnt. Now, it tries to do the "Installing Rom" thing, but fell back to "Install Failed" screen. I opened up the rom partition again and I saw only BCB and BootCnt files, and none else. Nook surely formatted the rom partition first before trying to recreate it.
So I wonderfully bricked my Nook, and thought this is a good time to test if the rom partition backup works. I mounted the rom partition, untarred the backup, and rebooted. There we go, the Bronte Sisters are back. So the conclusion is that
1. When the BCB file's missing, it's simply recreated after a failed boot.
2. When the BootCnt file's missing, Nook thinks the rom partition is corrupted and tries to recreate it using rombackup.zip in the factory partition. I think this may have some side effects because firmware updates only change the files in the rom partition, leaving rombackup.zip untouched. So you will go back to the old rom partition after the built-in rom recovery.
3. The best rom recovery, I think, is using your manual backup of the rom partition. And maybe updating the rombackup.zip with a new one too?

BootCnt is a 32 bit little-endian count of the number of failed boots.
Once it hits eight your Nook will boot into the recovery image uRecImg, uRecRam.
You could also echo about anything to that file to make it arithmetically greater than 8.
Code:
echo 000 > /rom/devconf/BootCnt
That is 0x0a303030 > 8
Normally this is a B&N thing that asks you about factory restore.
If you replaced those two files it could be Clockwork Mod Recovery.

Nook Color with CM7 - Boot-looping

I changed the Android ID on my Nook Color (with Titanium Backup Pro) and now it is boot-looping, at the point where the arrow head moves around in a circle. It is running CM7, but I'm sure the rom is at least a year old. I think it has CWM recovery. How do I get to recovery and what should I do?
[edit] I found this thread and will see if there is something I can use.[/edit]

I pulled the microSDHD from the device and I can read the boot partition on my PC. Before I attempt repair, I want to copy a few data files from the SDCard's data partition, but I do not see it. How do I mount the SDcard partition so that I can copy the files? I know how to do this once I can successfully boot to the Android desktop, but not without the desktop.
I looked through verygreen's SDCard installation instructions here and I can execute boot into recovery, but that just looks for update files and shuts down. I did not get a menu to allow me to mount the data partition via USB for the PC to read or for any options at all.

I have a bootable SDCard (verygreen's) and removed it to boot from emmc. That works, so the problem is on the microSDHC. When I insert the microSDHC (8GB) card in the card reader on my PC, I see the first three partitions are healthy and the last (5.9GB) is not. The only partition that I can assign a drive letter to is the first partition, Boot. Is there any repair I can do to that forth partition?