[myTouch 3G Slide General] eckre:
You have undoubtedly seen lot of Rooting guides for the Mytouch 3G Slide, claiming to root the phone:

wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/TMobile_myTouch_Slide:_Full_Update_Guide

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1108316 New way to downgrade from 2.2 to 2.1

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=999121 Ultra Easy Rooter [dbzfanatic][xologist]

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1025336 How-To [Root][NewLinks] The myTouch 3GS if you updated to Offical 2.2.1 and lost root

SuperOneClick doesn't work. Nothing works, I've tried them all several times from several different angles. Therer is some sort of NAND lock on the phone, above and beyond typical. Anyways.

None of the aformentioned guides work, so won't waste your time like I did. They are also all written by people who can not communicate well with other human life forms, and they assume you have a CS and/or IS degree, and also assume you have all the software installed on your machine that they have on theirs, and have all the same settings on your phone that you "should" have on yours and they also assume you are doing some "obvious" steps in the middle of their steps that you should know how to do. They won't tell you that, but they do. So here is the REAL definitive step by step guide, with pics, on how to do it. BTW, you don't need a gold card. You don't need to mess with any consol crap. This should take 15-20 minutes max. What we're basically going to be doing is downgrading to 2.1-update1, then rooting, then putting on the Cyanogen Mod, then adding the google apps (which are not included in the cyanogen mod). I've put as many pics as I could and tried to do a step by step that ANYONE can follow.

I was using Windows 7 64-bit SP1 and I think these are the things that you need to have set up, you may not need them but I was trying so many of everything that I don't even know if they are all required, I'm sure I missed some things, but I will keep editing this guide as needed)

*Make sure you have at least 25MB of free space on your phone's internal memory.

*Make sure you've backed everything up you want to (text messages, bookmarks, programs, etc) But the google cloud should keep most your other stuff okay. (email etc) http://tinyurl.com/3b4qp6q

*Turn USB Debugging on your phone. (Settings, applications, development > USB Debugging - check)

*Turn phone to charge mode only when you plug in the USB cable

*PDAnet was running on the PC (This is required it will install the correct driver for step 1, though it's a tethering app and you won't need it for that) - http://junefabrics.com/android/download.php

1. Plug in phone and go to device manager from control panel on your computer.

You open the "Android USB Devices" and see what driver it says.

If it says something like "Mytouch Slide 3G"

go to Update driver > Browse my computer for driver software > Let me pick

pick this one: "ADB Device Interface" , say okay, etc.

If it does say "ADB Drvice Interface" you're good. Exit out of that.

2. Download "T-Mobile_myTouch_3G_Slide_Software_Update_2.15.531.3.exe" from here http://www.htc.com/us/support/t-mobile-mytouch-3g-slide/downloads/ (157MB)

3. Go to your temp windows folder. IF you do Start > Search %TEMP% it should pop up. Keep on eye on this folder as you do the next step. (Maybe sort by date modified to help)

4. Double Click the "T-Mobile_myTouch_3G_Slide_Software_Update_2.15.531.3.exe" file and have it extract everything. At the first main screen, just wait there with it open and not installed.

You hopefully should have seen some folders be created in your temp file. There were 2 on mine, like so, check them both out:

When you see the one that looks like this:

and has a folder structure like this:

that's the folder you want to copy. So:

5. Highlight the folder with "ARUWizard.exe" and "rom.zip" in it. Mine had about 74 files in it. Copy it, and copy it to another part of your hard drive, and rename that awful folder, sheesh. :) (not needed)

6. You can close out of the Rom Update Utility.

7. In that NEW copied folder, delete "rom.zip"

8. Download the ~140 MB "ESPRIMG.zip" from here: http://www.4shared.com/file/OsmF_ZD7/ESPRIMG.html

9. Put it into the folder that we copied out, and rename it from ESPRIMG.zip TO rom.zip

10. Now, while you are in that folder, "ARUWizard.exe" check check, next, etc.

11. This will downgrade your phone from 2.2.1 to 2.1-update1

12. Tada! Good job. Now, go download the lastest Cyanogen firmware ROM here: http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?type=stable&device=espresso

13. Rename the "update-cm-7.X.X-Slide-signed.zip" to "update.zip"

14. While you are doing this, download the lastest Google Apps from here: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Latest_Version#Google_Apps Mine was called "gapps-gb-20110613-signed.zip" and put that on your phone's memory card as well, no renaming needed.

15. Turn off your phone and take out the memory card and put it in your computer (or turn the phone back into a mountable drive) and copy over the update.zip onto the root director of your memory card.

16. Hold "down volume" and "power" which will boot you into a techy looking screen. Ignore any errors, the volume up and down navigates, so go into "Recovery" Mode.

17. Once in the Recovery, you will see a device with a triangle. Press "Volume Up" & the "Power" button.

18. Select the option to Wipe data/factory reset. Then select the option to Wipe cache partition.

19. See the option to "apply sdcard:update.zip" ? Do it, with power as confirm. This will put the Cyanogen mod on your phone!

20. Reboot system now. Now, you should boot into Cyanogen 2.3.x! However, you will notice you don't have any of the google apps.

21. So, Now, go into your programs on the phone, and you will see "Rom Manager" a eye with a tophat. Say "Install Rom from SD Card" and pick the "gapps-gb-20110613-signed.zip" You may have to fiddle with the plugging in USB/etc to get access to this, you don't have to buy the program, it will do it, but you have to have it set up so you can see the MicroSDcard, etc.

It will reboot your phone and you will now and install all the google apps. The most important one is MARKET, so you can download stuff. It will now go through all the TOS for each google program you said you want. The rest the wizard should navigate you through properly.

Holy hell this was a terribly troubleshooting process which probably took me 20 hours to figure out they were ALL wrong. Big thanks to "Da Maestro" who helped me on Cyanogenmod.

Enjoy!