Saturday, June 4, 2011

Flow for common issues

Here are some common issues people look for help on with their NC. Many are interrelated. My goal is to walk through processes that can help address them. I tend to avoid post-setup configuration. Actually using a device is less interesting to me than breaking it and fixing it, that's just how I roll.

- my NC won't update

- my NC can't talk to my wireless

- I want to root my NC

- I want to use netflix

- My nook reset itself and I can't connect to my wifi now

- how do I back up my NC?

-BN has remotely reset my NC, what do I do?

- I hate the udpate. BN says I can't roll back. BN is mistaken.

- BN sent me a nook with only 1G of room! DeanGibson has a fix for that, written
up here with additional info.


- I hate the cookbook. So do we all. Dean fixed that, too.

- You talk about rooting a lot, but I thought I was rooted on an SD card running Phiremod. What's up with that? By my definition, you're not rooted. Sorry for the confusion.

Getting Netflix Running

So, you want to watch netflix on your Nook Color. No problemo.

There's a fast, free way to do this. The fast, free way is not the easy way. Specifically, the fast, free way to do this assumes that you know the editor vi, already have ssh, telnet or adb access to your NC, and are very comfortable with commands like "mount -o rw,remount -t ext2 /dev/block/mmcblk0p5 /system"

If that's you, just change two build.prop values to these:

ro.product.model=HTC Vision
ro.product.manufacturer=HTC

The rest of the class, this method costs five bucks but will save you hair pulling. And you ought to be supporting the occasional android developer anyhow.

You will need: to be running 1.2

Start by rooting your 1.2 Nook Color (I recommend: root w/4.5.18 + apk-enabler)

Go to the Android market and install netflix.

While you're there, buy root explorer.

I have not found a simpler, safer way to edit build.prop on-device. I've tried the mount /system app (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.beansoft.mount_system) in conjunction with non-root file managers (ES, Astro); I've tried File Expert and could not get it to link to an editor well.

Launch root explorer. It's a graphical display of all your files.

su will ask you if you want to give Root Explorer superuser permissions. The answer is yes.

Navigate up to /

Navigate into /system

Press the "Mount R/W" button displayed at the top

Long-press on the "build.prop" file

Choose Open in Text Editor

Change two lines in build.prop:

Change:

ro.product.model=NOOKcolor

to:

ro.product.model=HTC Vision

Change:

ro.product.manufacturer=BarnesAndNoble

To:

ro.product.manufacturer=HTC

Save the file. Root explorer backs it up automatically. Check the file; if you did something wrong fix it now by copying build.prop.bak onto build.prop and trying again.

A blown build.prop can prevent your NC from booting normally, which might lead you to need to reinstall all or part of the OS. (You should be able to restore a backup of /system, after formatting /system. But that assumes you made a clockwork recovery backup of /system.)

Restart your NC.

Sign into Netflix.

Watch movies.