Rooting: Don't KNOW how to do it, Don't WANT to do it; But I guess I have no choice..

[TheBadPenny]

Hi Everyone:

I'm back and so is my TF300. Altogether it's been 6 weeks in the repair shop. To be honest it's been rather a pain using the Asus warranty, but at least I had one. You know, they WILL NOT replace a faulty device no matter what. They just repair and repair and repair. Anyway, so far it's had a new main board and a new touchscreen installed, and I KINDA feel like I paid full price and got a refurbished machine and a huge pain in the @ss for my money, but THAT's another thread.

To continue with my mission:
I tried the method suggested by Good Intentions. The ONLY thing I may have done differently was I used the ww firmware version that was the counterpart of the currently installed Chinese version (aka not the LATEST) version. That might be why it didn't work, as I've read that installing NEWER firmware works better.

I'm pretty hesitant to install the JB update (ie the latest version) right now in case it's unstable and ends up causing further problems on this device, problems that will be no longer covered under warranty if I change out the firmware. If I switch to WWJB there's no way to go back to CNICS, simply so I can take it in under warranty again, huh?

I WILL try flashing to WWJB if no other options present, or if there are no new problems on this unit after two weeks (all the problems so far seem to have materialized within two weeks of purchase/repair).

Steps of My Attempt:

1. Format the external micro SD card

2. Download WW firmware (version V9.4.3.30 Only for WW SKU (Android 4.0.3)) from the Asus website.

3. Unzip it once.

4. Renamed the once unzipped file EP300_SDUPDATE.zip

5. Copy it to the external, freshly formatted, micro SD card.

6. Turn off the TF300

7. Put into recovery by holding down power and volume down.

8. Wait for the white lettering across the top left corner of the screen
The lettering read:
cardhu-user bootloader <2.10 e> released by "TW_epad-9.4.3.32.2-20120809" A03
checking for Android ota recovery
checking for RCK... press key [vol_up] in 5 sec to enter RCK

9. Press volume up ASAP
Received the message:
Booting recovery kernel image
signature match.

Next, the screen changed to the Android robot guy with his belly panel open and a blue geometric shape turning around in there. Also a blue (progress?) bar across the bottom of the screen.
After a few seconds the Android guy lays on his back with a red triangle containing an exclamation mark above his belly.
Here the screen stops and I had to press volume down to restart the device, and it restarted with no problems and no changes.

I tried this several times without luck.

10. Then I tried unzipping the file one more time and putting both the unzipped once AND the fully unzipped files on the micro SD and repeated the above steps. The result was exactly the same.

Next I am going to retry this process, but this time rename the file to the same name as the Chinese version of ICS (rather than SD Update) and see what happens. Not sure what else to try though, short of attempting an update to WWJB.

Any further thoughts on how to flash to WW without updating or rooting?

Thanks for your suggestions, everybody. I plan on going through them more or less one-by-one from easiest to most complicated until something sticks :P

Cheers!

Penny

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[TheBadPenny]

Ok,

Repeated the exact same steps, only this time I renamed the WWICS version to CN_epad-user-9.4.3.30

The results were exactly the same. No change to the system, no difficulty restarting.

What do you think, should I try renaming it to CN_epad-user-10.4.2.17? Thus fooling it into thinking it's the updated version..?

Sounds sketchy, but I might try.

[TheBadPenny]

OK,

I tried the above all over again, this time renaming the zipped firmware to CN_epad-user-10.4.2.17 (the file name for the updated version).

Again, the results were the same.

But NOW I notice something interesting... when the micro SD card is mounted, there is a message in notifications saying "System Update File Detected Touch to start the system upgrade" When I eject the micro SD card, the notification goes away. So it would SEEM that the device does think the name changed file is the anticipated update.

Yet I'm kind of nervous to let the fake update go ahead in case it gives me the Chinese JB it might have downloaded from the internet and then won't let me roll back, or it might block me from following other suggestions to attempt a flash to the WWJB....

I wish this wasn't so scary!!

TBP

[TheBadPenny]

Right, so I took a short break and then went ahead and pressed to update.

It asked me which version I wanted to update to. CN_epad-user-10.4.2.17 was the only option, so I went ahead and selected it. The tablet told me the update would take 10 minutes and that I wouldn't be able to do it while it was updating, and that I needed at least 19% charge on the battery. I pressed to go ahead and the device restarted.

It went to the Android with the open belly and the rotating geometry. Then he laid on his back end the process ended as before. I restarted, no problems, but no change to the system.

This is going to take a while, isn't it?

:P

Penny

[Stobor]

Hi Penny

My understanding is that you wish to root for two reasons.

First you want to get rid of the bloat ware on your device because you are worried that the powers that be are watching you through them. My response to this is that no matter what you do on the internet they can track your activity. They do not need "an app for that" they can track you through your ISP with no problem at all.

Second you want to install Google play and other apps. You do not need to root to do this, you can side load the Google play apk file, and then since Google play is an app you should be able to access it like any other apps content. To sideload the apk you need to go to a site like XDA Developers and do some research on it, it is a simple process and should not endanger your device or your warranty (to the best of my knowledge).

I hope this helps since you seem to be having difficulties rooting.

[zAlbee]

Penny, I don't know if goodintentions' method works or not. But an update usually fails (with the red exclamation mark) for one of 3 reasons:

1) the update.zip is not right or is not compatible with your version (likely)
2) your current version is not a stock version - I've heard reports of Transformers coming back from ASUS warranty repair with some development version, not meant to be released to public.
3) your version has modified system files. (unlikely since you didn't root and wouldn't be able to make any modifications)

Can you check your current firmware version to see if it was changed?