[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Android General] slycker:
A tutorial for how to get ADB and DroidExplorer up and running for your Rhodium in Windows Vista.

All this information exists in bits and pieces of posts throughout this (and other) forums, though I felt it would be helpful to compile it in one place.

If you’re running a different version of windows, the differences should generally be fairly minor. Please let me know if there’s any mistakes or modifications I should make here.

ADB refers to the Android Debug Bridge, a tool put out by google, which lets you access your android device via the USB connection for the purposes of debugging it. One particularly useful component is the ability to access your phone from your PC via a terminal window (similar to a command prompt). While not necessarily intended for this purpose, it may be used for a rudimentary level of USB access to transfer files to and from your device. It will NOT let you have any of the advanced functions that a native driver would.

Optional First Step:

Download ADB from Google:

You may choose to install the SDK yourself, but this will be incorporated in your installation of DroidExplorer in step 4 if you don't already have the SDK installed.

ADB is part of the Android SDK (Software Development Kit), which you can download from:

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html​

Install the most recent version for windows. For simplicity sake, I suggest you extract/install it to the root, so for example, to

C:\android-sdk-windows\​

Optional:

To make your life easier, it’s a good idea to add the folder containing adb to your system environment path, so you can use adb from anywhere on your drive.

To do this, right click on My Computer, click ‘Advanced System Settings’, and then click on ‘Environment Variables’.

Choose one of the PATH variables (either for your user, or the system wide one), and add the path containing the adb.exe file. For example, if you extracted the sdk to the root of C drive as I had suggested, the path would be:

[blah blah, preceding path values] ;C:\android-sdk-windows\platform-tools\

Make sure you remember to have a semicolon preceding the path you’re adding, so windows knows it is separate from the previous entry.

Second Step:

Remove previous drivers:

If you have tried to connect your phone (in android mode) to your PC, you may need to go to the device manager and remove the incorrectly-installed drivers.

Third Step:

Install Drivers:

The key obstacle here is that there is no driver made by HTC (or others) specifically to connect the Rhodium in Android mode to a PC. While there may eventually one day be such a driver, we need to resort to a work-around.

Drivers Option #1:

A product called PDANet installs software on your android phone and your windows PC that then functions as a PC and device driver set. (The application has other intended uses, as you can read on their website, but these are secondary to our purpose).

Download and install the latest version of PDANet, on both your android Rhodium (via marketplace) and your PC (via the below link):

http://www.junefabrics.com/android/index.php​

You will then need to follow the prompts to connect your phone, select the manufacturer (HTC), and the HTX XDA Driver will be installed. Windows security may require you to approve the installation, as the driver is unsigned. After installing, you will need to restart your computer before the drivers will work.

As part of the install, you will be asked to connect your RHOD phone to your computer via the USB cable. The new hardware wizard should pop up, and you should choose to install the driver automatically (given that you’ve previously placed the driver onto your system with PDANet – if you’ve managed to locate the specific driver file as I’ve heard rumors of, then browse to that file).

USB Debugging needs to be enabled on your device, which it is in the stock builds provided here (Settings->Applications->Development->USB debugging).

Drivers Option #2:

Install the HTC Sync Drivers - this has been described for Windows 7, although there are mixed reports as to the success. Information is in the below links:

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=12705726&postcount=7

http://www.mydigitallife.info/workaround-for-htc-hero-sync-problem-in-windows-7/

Optional:

To check that your phone is working, type ‘adb devices’ into your command prompt. If you see your device, you’re good to go. (if you didn’t set the environment path to include the location of adb.exe, you’ll have to either cd to the directory first, or type

C:\android-sdk-windows\platform-tools\adb devices​

(if you installed the sdk elsewhere, then modify the expression appropriately

What can you do now? To see a list of commands you can use, simply type adb from the command prompt.

To use adb to send a file ‘picture.jpg’ to your sd card, in your command prompt, go to the location of the picture, and then type :

adb push picture.jpg /sdcard/​

to see the contents of /sdcard , type:

adb shell ls /sdcard/​

Read more about ADB here: http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/adb.html

And for more details on setting up and using ADB, see this (the source for this workaround):

http://theunlockr.com/2009/10/06/how-to-set-up-adb-usb-drivers-for-android-devices/

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Fourth Step:

Install Droid Explorer

Now that this is working, you may appreciate an application called DroidExplorer, which gives you a GUI that lets you navigate your device in a manner similar to windows explorer. From here, you can copy, move and delete files, as well as install and uninstall applications.

Download and install DroidExplorer from here:

http://de.codeplex.com/​

Startup DroidExplorer, and you’re finished. Do read up on ADB and DroidExplorer on their respective pages so that you know both what you can do as well as what you might inadvertently break by blindly playing with options.

As has been said frequently on this website, if you want safe, stick to the default ‘stable’ XDAndroid install for the Rhodium, and keep your windows mobile running as a backup. If you want more, know that you’ll have lots of learning to do, and potentially may loose all the data on your phone and need to spend hours learning and fixing it. You may even brick your phone (make it unusable and unsalvageable – make it about as valuable as a brick).

Helpful Links:

The wiki for ADB on XDAndroid:

http://xdandroid.com/wiki/FAQ#What_is_ADB_.2F_How-To_ADB

Original xda thread on getting USB to work on the rhodium:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=849718

If you have any additional comments/changes to suggest, please let me know, and I’ll modify this initial post.