I got a Nook Color from some deal site (maybe 10/11?) partly as a nice portable book reader for Lauren and partly to be rooted into a general purpose Android tablet for both of us. I rooted it and it mostly worked for several months, then wouldn’t boot. I don’t remember what all I did to it, so as I rebuild it now I’ll record the details here so if it dies again I’ll have some clue about its history. I’m not particularly a NC guy, so these notes are not likely to be useful to anybody else.
When it would no longer boot (went into a loop drawing the pretty nook color logo) I restored to factory default by holding the n button while powering up (I think now this is actually recovery) and maybe accepting a safety question. It came up as new, showing the intro video. I had to reregister, give it time zone, my wifi passphrase, etc. It came up with firmware 1.2. Current seems to be 1.4.1, and that seems to be rootable, so I downloaded the update from B&N, copied it via USB to the NC and let it notice and update itself.
From this post I downloaded a whole CWM image and flasher. That and all the other Nook stuff is in Downloads\NookRootStuff (not Installs!). Wrote 2 GB SD card, but couldn’t get NC to boot from it. Tried again, then with a 4 GB card – all fail. Then pulled down a 4 GB image of 3.2.0.1 TWRP from this link and wrote (using win32 Disk Imager, as I’d used for all the other tries). Took a very long time to write the images.
That installed and booted with the little skull and crossbones. TWRP provides a touchscreen interface. Used it to install ManualNooter 5.12.20. That seemed to work OK. Put a couple of apps on, but still lots claim not compatible. Haven’t figured how to install Amazon Appstore. Found out: go to Amazon, enter email addr and they send you a link. I’ve downloaded it, but not installed on anything yet. But 1.4.1 blocks sideloaded apps (checkbox in setup for “allow apps from other sources” or something is no longer there). That’s not acceptable – so 1.4.1 is out.
I tried a factory reset (wrong: just a recovery reboot) by holding power and home and answering yes to do you want to reset and are you sure type questions with the home button. Looked like it reloaded, and came up with an intro video and setup screens. But it was still 1.4.1.
Did 7 aborted boots – hold power til it just flashes black screen, let go and hold 12 sec (while Read Forever is on black screen). It said clearing data then Installing… Restoring original factory image. It restarted – Reading Forever, gray n, white page nook color with highlight scanning back and forth. Got brunette in blue for video/setup. It’s back to 1.2! (And wifi is off, so no unwanted updates ’til I can get it rooted and protected.)
I’m pretty tempted to just put Cyanogen (7? is there a 9 that’s later/greater?) on, since it doesn’t really need much B&N capability. There are B&N as well as Kindle readers for Android, so I don’t think I’ll lose much. (Latest stable is 7.1, so that’s what I ended up with.)
I’m a little concerned about performance if I just boot CM from SD, so I’d like to write it to (flash? in) the NC. I don’t understand what all areas there are to write stuff to. There must be a main place it boots from, and there’s apparently a “recovery” place as well. And it obviously can get back to factory (1.2 here), so there must be yet another image somewhere.
There’s clearly a “recovery” place – still don’t know where. ROM manager does know, and will flash a recovery ROM. But you need to root to run ROM manager. OK – copied manualnooter 4.6.16 to the 4G bootable SD. 4.6.16 is the one that’s needed for rooting 1.2. Booted to the skull/crossbones “LOADING” SD image (TWRP) and installed MN4.6.16 successfully. Booted, ran ROM manager. It said I needed CWM Recovery installed, so I said do it. Success. Tried to download CM7.1, but ROM manager said to upgrade to pro to find ROMs. Told ROM Manager to partition (2GB) SD. It did, but booted into CWM Recovery to accomplish it.
Downloaded CM7.1 latest to PC, copied via USB to SD in Nook (drive N:). Told ROM manager to install ROM from SD. In its dialog, checked boxes to back up existing ROM (1.2 rooted), clear Dalvik and data. It rebooted to CWM Recovery and that did those steps. Took maybe 10 minutes. But then while trying to install CM it said there was a problem with the file and the update failed. Checked md5 sum both on PC an on 2GB SD – both OK. Tried to reboot, but Nook just hung on gray n screen. Copied CM zip to 4G bootable TWRP SD, said install CM. It did, and when rebooted came up in CM!
Tried a couple of times to boot into recovery with power+n, but always just booted normal to CM. Used ROM manager to flash CWR (again?) – said OK. Used RM to boot to recovery, and sure enough it came up in CWR. Why doesn’t power+n work? So probably the first flashing of CWR (through RM) worked – I just didn’t know how to boot to recovery.
I’ve used CWR (from SD), but the touch interface in TWRP is nicer, so I’d like to have that instead. Put a zip for “TWRP as recovery” on SD, used RM to boot to recovery (CWR). Told it to install TWRP zip – OK.
Read you can get into boot manager with n after power. Did that, got nice boot manager screen. It knew about recovery and alternate recovery. Setting that to boot to recovery it came up in TWRP! I hope there’s a compatible command line interface or however RM uses recovery so RM can still do its thing (though it expects CWR).
Installed a bunch of apps, including Titanium Backup. I think I backed up everything. Nook is now really very functional – including weather, market, calendar, Toodledo (with a fast entry app I didn’t know about before!), password manager – most everything that’s on my phone.
Haven’t tried sideloading yet. Only app I’m aware of wanting is Amazon app store. I have the file. I’ll leave that for another day. This whole process has taken a LOT of time. Yeah, I’ve learned a bunch, and I guess I’m happy to have not had to pay top dollar for a ‘real’ tablet, but it was really expensive.
Current state of SD is: 2G is formatted useable by Nook, has Titanium backup, various other files. 4G is bootable to TWRP, has various files on it. More sensible would be to rebuild 2G as the bootable recovery card and reformat the 4GB (I suspect to fat32) so it’s useable as storage on the Nook for books etc. I have all the files to do that in Jim\Documents\Downloads\NookRootStuff. But I’ve spent enough time on this for today (or this month). At least it works now.