[GT540 Optimus Android Development] whocouldshebe:
Additional Preparation Steps

- I have the international version GT540 UK version V20B.

- Always run everything as Admin, since I have Windows 7 x64.

- I backed off, uninstalled everything, unmounted and removed my memory card.

- I just left my SIM card in the phone.

- None of the programs used are on any Android market but all of them are free.

- Turn usb debugging on settings/applications/development and leave it on.

1st step:

Out of the box it has 1.6 so I upgraded to 2.1 using the LG website:

wwwstg.lg.com/uk/android/index.jsp

The instructions on these page work perfectly and may be used to restore if your phone gets trashed. The newest update programs for LG phones will apparently not work properly if you are not currently inside the country where the phone is originally from. In my case, I'm in the USA with a UK phone, so I cannot select the provider nor the phone model nor will it let me change the country even when I change my location in windows region settings of the control panel for the new LG update software so use the OLD version at the link above. (newer is not better) Take note of the version number that the updater detects. You will need it for step 3. If you have already upgraded then the LG mobile software will still tell you the version of phone you have.​

2nd step:

I had to get root using superoneclick rageagainstthecage no other root method would work, not psneuter nor z4root, neither in temporary nor permanent. I tried all before getting the rageagainstthecage version of SuperOneClick to load. Search for the file in google: "SuperOneClickv1.6.5-ShortFuse.zip" (v1.9.1 does not work so once again newer is not better.) You will know when you have root because when it reboots there will be a skull bone pirate android icon in the menu that says "Superuser" but you will have to reboot the phone first to see it. In some cases I could even go to the terminal and type "su" and the # prompt would come up fine, but that wasn't good enough, I had to actually get the "Superuser" icon to appear before moving past this step. (Step 4 gave me permission denied when I didn't have superuser even after typing SU at terminal without any errors, and even though I could grant apk programs superuser permission after running z4root in even non-factory roms.)​

3rd step:

Download KDZ_FW_UPD_EN.7z This is the KDZ file installer that doesn't need the windowsenabler. Install the msxml.msi included, the driver dll files must be inside the same folder as KDZ_FW_UPD.exe. AVG and Avira both think this executable is a virus, I had to actually uninstall AVG to run it as admin, but you can just turn Avira off. Also dowload the KDZ file with fastboot, for me it was V20B_00+fastboot.kdz since when I upgraded my phone in step 1 it told me my phone was UK V20B even though I am in the USA. Here is a site with ALL of the different orginal roms in case you want to get a different orginal one.

android.modaco.com/content/lg-gt540-optimus-gt540-modaco-com/311477/lg-gt540-rom-updates-from-lg/

It is pretty easy to find the other roms with fastboot already installed using google by typing: "V20B_00 fastboot kdz" for example.

(They say it doesn't matter what country of OS you put on, but for me, after installing other countries, I'd get a ton of errors when Android booted up fully, so much so that I couldn't rerun the orginal LG installer for 2.1. Luckly booting into "USB Download Mode" with Volume Down, Camera, & Power Buttons saved me, because I could rerun KDZ installer and put the one from UK back on, boot up, then use LG's instructions from step 1 to get back to the factory version of 2.1.)​

4th step:

When the phone turns on you will get errors, but no big deal, just close the errors, unhook it, turn the phone off and turn on into fastboot mode, by holding the camera button in first while turning the phone on. The screen will be completely black after the plain white LG logo goes away. The animated LG logo will not appear, just a black screen. Here I hooked the phone back up to my computer, but this time it had to be a different USB port than the one I used for step 1. The drivers weren't found, but I turned on windows online search and it found the Android drivers for me. Some say that installing the SDK, in there you can install the USB drivers, but those steps do not work. The drivers are on here but for some reason windows can't find them, and it didn't even try when I kept plugging it in and out of different USB ports on the front that I used in step 1. I used a USB port on the back of my PC, after the Adroid drivers installed, it finally got to the point were I could run the fastboot commands listed in this forum from the DOS prompt as ADMIN. Note, the first command needs a space "fastboot -w". If it just says "waiting for device" then the drivers are not installed yet. If it says permission denied then you never got root, go back to step 2.​

Another note, I flashed to the 2.3 here in this forum directly from 2.1 without even stepping up.

After boot up I noticed a lot of programs would 'force close' immediately after opening, like the terminal and even the contact list, so I downloaded the free "ROM Manager" from the android market with my phone, opened it, then scrolled down and ran "Fix Permissions." Now everything is working correctly.

I'm a computer programmer, have flashed lots of other phones, unlocked, etc. in a few minutes but it took me 3 days to get these pre-steps figured out so I thought I'd be helpful to the noobs since I myself turned out to be a noob on this one. I thought the point of Android was so that we would have freedom with our phones to do what we wanted. It was a huge disappointment to find out that it was so difficult to upgrade past the factory OS. This complicated process is what makes the difference between a $200-500 phone or a $100-$150 phone, so once again the OS has us locked into crazy restrictions and contracts. When will they ever just sell us an open OS unlocked $50 world phone (CDMA/GSM) no sim card so it won't be stolen with Android 2.3 or above as superuser out of the box with the ability to store apps onto SD? That's easily doable and would dominate the phone market in a day. Do they even want control over the market share, or what? It appears they just enjoy battling it out forever instead making us all unhappy instead. Oh well, those of us in here finally got what everybody else wants.