How to Root and Get ICS On Your Droid4 For Total Newbies

Anyonenormal

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Alright,
So I’m brand new to this forum, but with the help of a couple people (GigaJake, Jsnweitzel, Kwyrt, and Finndo77) I was able to finally get ICS and a rooted phone.
So first of all, thank you to the guys mentioned above for letting me pester the crap out of you with my issues/questions, and for being so patient with me.


Now, I used two different forum posts to help me out with this, But I found you’ll only need to open one more tab.
(http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-4-hacks/212307-droid-4-utility-updated.html)
This is the post with the tools I used, and the links I used to download them.
You’re going to need a couple things…

First, Download this (https://www.dropbox.com/s/132a5i038luy4vu/Droid4withICSfix-rootLITE (3).zip) If this link doesn’t work, go to the URL I gave you first, and you’ll find the updated tools. It is a double Zip, so make sure you go in and get to the actual folder. Extract to a folder or desktop.. I made a folder called “RootD4” on my desktop so I can place everything I needed in there, and quickly run if I needed to. Notice that you will have a folder icon, and not a .zip Icon (colorful book looking thing). If you have a .zip icon, you’re doing it wrong.
Next download (http://sbf.droid-developers.org/cdma_maserati/VRZ_XT894_6.5.1-167_DR4-1_M1-219_1FF_01.xml.zip) this is your GB 219. (GB stands for Gingerbread) This one STAYS .ZIP Do not extract all the way.
Next on our list is ICS 213 (current as of now)( https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BywuYGr-7VrYUjVSanRzaTZ5alU/edit) (ICS means Ice Cream Sandwich) Unzip until you see D4213.zip (was D4OTA.zip) Place into your nifty convenient folder that you made.
Last but not least is our matching kernel (you’ll understand why this is important later) (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BywuYGr-7VrYT1J0VFBCY1NBM2M/edit) Extract until you see ICSFIX (the icon looks like a piece of paper with a shiny icon inside of it.. that icon is a disc. Move that into the folder you made as well)

***Key point to keep in mind is that whatever ICS version you’re running, 211,212,213, you’ll need that matching kernel. So we’re using ICS 213 on this post, notice how the kernel above is also labeled 213.. this is important ***

*IMPORTANT* Before you move on, make sure all the above is downloaded FIRST, trust me.. easier to keep track of.

Another little sidebar.. I’m writing the way that I brought my phone over to ICS because its fresh in my memory. Yes, I rooted my phone first. Its easier to bring the root over to ICS.. if you don’t want to root beforehand there is a way to root with the utility tool on ICS, but I find its easier and more convenient the way I did it because once you get your shiny new tasty ICS on your phone, you won’t want to waste any more time doing other things, and you’ll want to play with it immediately! (trust me, its awesome! I did a weird little dance as soon as I saw ICS loading on my phone.. haha)
Anyway, now that everything is downloaded lets get started.


***If you get easily distracted, devote your attention to this.. you’re going to need it***
***Make sure your phone is close to fully charged, or is 100% charged.. trust me on this***

Step 1: use the USB cable provided with your phone (as long as its in good connection, if it looks like crap, borrow someone elses.), and plug your phone into the computer.

Step 2: once the motousb module has finished loading, exit out of everything that popped up. Now, pick up your Droid 4 and hit home to get to your main page (no apps open on the main screen, no messing with anything else, just get to the main unlocked home page) click on the menu button (three lines on the far left of the bottom screen.. its lit up.) and click on settings.

Step 3: From the Settings screen, click Application. Click Development, and check USB Debugging. *Necessary*

Step 4: Place Droid back down, bring your attention back to your keyboard. You see that beautiful little windows button? Press it on either the keyboard or click on the icon on your taskbar. In that search bar, type in “Device Manager” Near the top you’ll see ADB Interface, and if you click on the plus sign, you’ll see Mot Composite ADB below it. If these are there you’re good to go. If not go to USB and PC Charging Drivers - Motorola Mobility, Inc. USA. Once you’ve restarted your computer repeat step 4 and make sure the drivers are there. (Big thanks to Standard101 for posting this useful information in the Droid 4 utility post)

Step 5: Remember that big file we downloaded and extracted twice to get to a folder? (in case you forgot what its called its “Droid4withICSfix-rootLITE”) We are going to cut “GBB219Fastboot”, double click the Droid4withICSfix-rootLITE, and once loaded, double click on the “Files” folder and right click in a blank white space and select paste. Click the big blue left button near the top left of the screen to go back.

Step 6: Right click the ICSFIX icon and select cut. Double click “Droid4withICSfix-rootLITE” and double click on the “files” folder as well. Find an empty white space and paste. Click the blue back button near the top left of the screen to go back again.

Step 7: Double click “Droid4Windows+ICSfix+root+DATA SAVE” (it’s the icon with two little cogs on a white window) It will say “Resetting ADB and starting Droid 4 Utility”, then Daemon Not Running, starting it now, then it will say Daemon Started Successfully.


Step 8: If you’re starting off of Stock GB like I did when I first rooted, then type in option 3 “Droid Root for 2.3.6 <gingerbread> on the selection screen. Follow any instructions, and just let the program do what it needs to. The phone should Reboot twice before it is finished. Once done rebooting twice, pick up your phone and go to your apps and look for an app called “Superuser”. It has an icon of an android with a little pirate patch, I found it awesome when I first saw it. If you have it, you are good to go. (You should if you followed my instructions.. I got it my first try.) If not you probably don’t have the correct drivers, or something else…

Step 9: Give yourself one pat on the back, you are now rooted! Awesome.
Continuing on…

Step 10: Now that we are rooted, we can download the root needed apps.. But there is only one that I see as needed here. And its on the nifty tool you still have open. Type in the number 5 in the selection menu with your phone still plugged into the computer. It will give you a couple prompts, and after hitting enter a few times, you should have an app installed on your phone. Now you’ll notice that it is requesting superuser permissions. Be careful with apps asking for superuser permissions.. make sure you initiated it, and that you trust it.. if not, deny.. but for Voodoo rootkeeper, we need this. So go ahead and give it permission.

Step 11: Inside Voodoo Rootkeeper, you will need to make a backup. Click the appropriate button and let the app work its magic. Afterwards you should be able to see several other options. The important one is “Temp un-root” Do not click on anything after this if you are only looking to root your phone.
If looking to upgrade to ICS continue with, Temp unroot, then click on Restore to root.


***Now those of you who want customized bootanimation, I recommend you stay rooted on GB as I was told that if you try to do a boot animation on the ICS build, it could result in a brick, and we don’t want that do we?
Also, keep in mind, if you are afraid of being booted off of the Verizon official upgrade path, then remember you are taking a risk in upgrading to ICS.. I believe since so many people have jumped, one of these intelligent programmers/developers are going to find a way to get us back on.. They won’t leave us stranded. ***


Pseudo Step 12: If you decided to jump ship after this.. then no worries, enjoy your rooted phone! You can install safestrap and go with other roms for GB, or get custom bootanimations. Those of you who jump ship now, go ahead and get the app called ROM Toolbox. It has boot animations, an over and underclocker, a root browser, and a lot of other nifty stuff. I love it!

Real Step 12: Those who decided to carry on as brave souls (no offense to the ones who jumped off, the purpose of this post was to help get ICS on the phone, so no worries) here’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. Remember that File we downloaded that said D4213.zip? (was D4OTA.zip) Good. Bring your start menu on the computer up, click on “Computer” and scroll down to the two drives that your phone has connected. Usually the one with the bigger memory is your SD card, and the one with the smaller memory is your internal. I could be wrong if those of you have a really small capacity sd card, but typically the SD card that comes with the Droid 4 is bigger than the internal memory. Once you double click on the SD Card drive, pull up the other folder with your D4213.zip (was D4OTA.zip)in it. Drag and drop it from the folder with D4213.zip (was D4OTA.zip) into the SD Card Drive.

Step 13: Unplug your phone from your comp after making sure the file is in there. Power down your phone. Take a breath.

Step 14: This is the tricky part. Grab the phone sideways with your first, middle finger, and thumb. First and middle will be on top of the volume buttons, the thumb will hold the bottom. Now position first finger on the top volume button, and the middle on the lower volume button. Hold both buttons down and with your left index finger, hold the power button down (all three should be held down) for about 2-3 seconds. You should see your unlit screen light up with a bunch of white text. Immediately take your fingers off. Don’t wait too long to follow the next step.. it’ll automatically reboot if no action is done within 10-15 seconds.

Step 15: Click volume down once to reach the “recovery” option. Then click the volume up button. This should look like your phone is restarting, but don’t worry, after a little bit you’ll see a droid with a little exclamation mark in a yield sign. From here push both volume buttons together at once. Scroll down with the volume down to “Apply update from External Storage”


***Important.. I know I said this before, but make sure your battery is close to fully charged***

Step 16: To make a selection press the power button once. Now scroll down with the down volume button until you see D4OTA.zip. Click the power button. (Make sure your battery is close to fully charged or more.. I recommend 100% just in case.. but as long as its powered high enough.)

Step 17: After a long freaking wait (worth it) ICS will be on your phone. You aren’t done yet though. With my phone I had a fastboot failure cycle that gets annoying everytime I rebooted or turned my phone back on. If you followed my instructions, then ICSFIX should be in the “Files” folder of Droid4withICSfix-rootLITE folder. If not, go ahead and follow my instructions this time. You need it if you have the same issues I had.

Step 18: repeat step 14.. if you’re too lazy to remember or look just follow the directions again. Grab the phone sideways with your first, middle finger, and thumb. First and middle will be on top of the volume buttons, the thumb will hold the bottom. Now position first finger on the top volume button, and the middle on the lower volume button. Hold both buttons down and with your left index finger, hold the power button down (all three should be held down) for about 2-3 seconds. You should see your unlit screen light up with a bunch of white text. Immediately take your fingers off. Your phone should be in the fastboot menu. If not, well, navigate with the down volume button to AP Fastboot, and push the up volume button to select “AP Fastboot”.

Step 19: Plug the USB back into the phone. (I find if you have it plugged in before loading the utility, and setting up the phone, it loads prematurely.. we don’t want that). From the utility selection screen, type in 12, and click enter. This will make sure you’ve already done the steps I told you to. Once you are ready, click enter. It should transfer about 8kb or something around there.. I cant remember how many it sent to the phone. Once finished it will reboot.

Step 20: Once you see the dead android, click on both volume buttons, scroll to “Wipe Cache” and let it do its business. Once done, go ahead and navigate back to “Apply Update From External Storage” Once again, Click on D4OTA. This loads Much, MUCH quicker this time, and once done, your phone should be able to boot normally!

WOOT YOU FINALLY HAVE ICS ON YOUR PHONE!

We still aren’t done yet!

Step 21 : Click on the little circle button with 6 small boxes in it, this is your new apps icon. The wonderful thing about this is… well, open up your keyboard and type in “Voodoo”. Pretty nifty huh? Click on the Voodoo OTA Icon (reminds me of a cockroach.. anyway) once in voodoo, click on “Restore Root” once complete Superuser should ask you to give superuser permissions to it. If not, don’t stress. Download ROMtoolbox (or something else that requires root). Once opened, if it allows you to go through it, you have root access again! If not, and voodoo doesn’t work, then go ahead and go back to the utility, and at the selection screen, enter 14 and run through the prompts it gives you. (I didn’t root my phone this way, so I don’t know the details.)

If you have any questions at all feel free to ask me to elaborate.. I believe that once someone helps you, help others! This community is awesome (even if it didn’t answer my first freaking questions but whatever..) and please give back. Either by giving your time helping others, or helping out the devs that made this all possible.

Once I find a ROM that I want to install, I’ll make a dummy guide for it as well.. but as for now, I haven’t found any that pique my interest.
Feel free to comment, criticize, and ask questions. People here are awesome like I said and will help.
Thanks for your time! And If I stepped on anyone’s toes and accidentally posted without giving them credit, I apologize, and please let me know. I’m just trying to help those who were once as lost as I was.

Also, if I happened to forget anything in the steps, (those who have their phones rooted and ICS'ed) please feel free to correct me.
 
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your guide has helped me out. Thanks!

Just a note: the option numbers in the droid utility has changed because of the updated exe.
 
A big note: step 17 to 20 is only required if you get stuck in a fastboot loop. The thread by SGMD1 does not include this step
 
A big note: step 17 to 20 is only required if you get stuck in a fastboot loop. The thread by SGMD1 does not include this step

Hey! Glad I could help! And thanks for the update, I'm gonna fix it when I get home..
I'm also planning on a how to flash a rom guide, and how to unbrick your phone when you try to go from ics back to gb.
 
Hello, Great post!

Unfortunately I bought a droid 4 that is locked to Verizon, and I cannot go to the home screen-settings-USB Debugging mode because the phone doesn't have a verizon sim card. Apparently phones with an IMEI starting with "990000" cannot be unlocked like other phones, and I have tried half a dozen unlocking services (online and in person) with no success. So this instructional post is essentially for unlocked phones that has access to the home screen menu.

That said, I have been searching for ways to flash ICS on my Droid 4 without having to enable USB debugging, since my phone is locked. So right now I have an unusable Droid 4 and I'm dying to get it up and running!

I have tried the above instructions, but with error messages like:

E:signature verification failed, installation aborted.

and

E: error in /tmp/sideload/package.zip (status 7) Installation aborted.

Has anybody found a solution to this?

Thank you in advance!
 
your trying the main zip, unzip and ull see another .zip inside, thats the one u want to flash, it will have verizon identification numbers to it
 
Hello, Great post!

Unfortunately I bought a droid 4 that is locked to Verizon, and I cannot go to the home screen-settings-USB Debugging mode because the phone doesn't have a verizon sim card. Apparently phones with an IMEI starting with "990000" cannot be unlocked like other phones, and I have tried half a dozen unlocking services (online and in person) with no success. So this instructional post is essentially for unlocked phones that has access to the home screen menu.

That said, I have been searching for ways to flash ICS on my Droid 4 without having to enable USB debugging, since my phone is locked. So right now I have an unusable Droid 4 and I'm dying to get it up and running!

I have tried the above instructions, but with error messages like:

E:signature verification failed, installation aborted.

and

E: error in /tmp/sideload/package.zip (status 7) Installation aborted.

Has anybody found a solution to this?

Thank you in advance!

What do you mean locked? are you able to boot in recovery at all?
We all have locked bootloaders.
As for the errors.. what screen are you flashing from? or how are you able to install?
I know there are some apps that can flash installs for you, but I would have to see what you've tried already.
Sorry for not answering sooner!
 
I am sim locked to US Verizon, and my sim is Telus Canada. The phone boots up and first the welcome page shows up, and "Please insert Sim" message. I don't have access to the home screen to access settings and enable usb debugging.

I used RSDlite to flash the new ROM but I always get an error message.

I also tried Android system recovery to access the "apply update from sdcard" once I copied the rom to the sd card, and it just freezes a blank lit black screen. It doesn't respond to the power button, up and down volume buttons press together, or just the power button and up volume or down volume works either. Plugging it into the computer doesn't change it either. How can I do a hard reset?

Thanks for your help!

Sorry for not replying faster, but now getting this to work is the new priority! My old droid is getting old!



Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using Xparent Green Tapatalk 2
 
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I know stupid question, but was your sim inserted correctly?
I know that I just hold down volume button plus power button for about 5 seconds and it hard resets... but to reset system settings (which I think is what you want to do.. )I'm not sure yet..
 
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but aren't all Droid 4 locked to Verizon? Thankfully there is a way to bypass the "insert sim" screen

I can't remember the sequence exactly, but the trick is to touch each of the 4 corners of your screen in a clockwise manner, starting from the top left.

If it doesn't work Google for the right sequence.

Once you get pass that screen, skip whatever restore from backup prompts, switch on usb debug, connect usb, set to camera ptp and proceed with the rest of the guide!
 
This is so awesome! The correct sequence is top left, top right, lower right, lower left.

Thank you!

But as I followed the directions to flash ICS, the installation aborted each time (status 7) as it verifies the package.

I did something stupid and flashed the ICS fix, and now I can't boot up in GB. It just boots to the motorola eye, then black lit screen and the battery gets warm. I would settle with getting back to stock GB.

I tried the utility to restore to GB and erase, but it aborted each time.

Anyone know what to do or recommend?

Thanks!

Ronielle

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using Xparent Green Tapatalk 2
 
When you switch to ICS, you're stuck on ICS permanently until something new comes out that fixes it.
As for the Status error you are getting.. did you extract everything you were supposed to and did you put it all in the utility folder? Not the first one, but the folder inside the folder to run the actual program? The program pulls the files from the folder.

For the second part, force power down (holding the down volume key, and the power button for about 4+ seconds) and then boot the phone by holding both volume keys and the power key. Follow steps 13-17 for this.
 
I managed to use RDSLITE to flash GB, and it worked. But the droid 4 utilities are not able to root it, saying that the system is read only. Since it seems that power drain is an issue for ICS, I will stick to GB for the time being, but would still want root access.

Next is trying to get my telus sim card to work on this verizon droid 4. Im actually typing this out on my new droid 4! Thanks everyone for your help!

Ronielle

Sent from my DROID4 using Xparent Green Tapatalk 2
 
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