[Miscellaneous Android Development] chaoscreater:
Awesome topic, thanks for posting this!! I've only just received my Star A1000 today and now I can try this out straight away, woot!!

It's funny coz before I bought the Star A1000, I had already tried doing tons of research on whether I can load OpenRecovery or CWM Recovery on it, as well as flashing custom firmwares etc. I couldn't find any so was disappointed, but bought it anyway since it's cheap and i was just gonna play around with it. But i'm so glad I found this topic since now the possibilities are opened up!

I do have on question though, I don't understand this part completely:

so how can we install a temporary recovery if we need to install it from a permanent recovery....?? That sounds confusing......i don't wanna risk bricking my brand new Star A1000 so I need to make sure I know what i'm doing......(EDIT, refer to below as I figured it out).

Can you please post simple instructions on what to do to install the recovery?

BTW, I wanna share this site on how to flash devices that use the MTK6516 CPU (which is what the STAR AXXX phones use), it's pretty good and I hope it'll be helpful to someone:

http://bm-smartphone-reviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/mtk-hd2-hd9-flashing-tutorial.html

Oh and regarding part about restoring or generating the IMEI, just use the tool that you can download from here:

http://xdaforums.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chinese_Clones_MTK6516

Oh and btw I can read Chinese so if someone needs help translating something, I can help with that.

EDIT:

OK nvm it seems I got my question about the recovery sorted. It seems my A1000 does have stock recovery, it says this in the recovery screen:

"Android system recovery <3e>"

and btw I bought my Star A1000 from sunsky-online.com in case anyone wants to know. It's the cheapest price I've found, and i've spent like 5 days comparing with many different sites, as well as with Alibaba and Aliexpress. Even though there are cheaper ones on Alibaba and Aliexpress, but I don't trust them so ended up buying at Sunsky instead.

Anyway just as an easy instruction for new beginners, to install the recovery (temporary method) on your Star A1000, you basically download the StarTools.zip file in the attachment on the first page. Then, extract the file "recovery-update.zip" from it. Rename the "recovery-update.zip" into "update.zip" (without the quotes of course), and put that file onto your memory card.

Now, as "byteshertz@hotmail.com" already pointed out in his first post, his A1000 doesn't seem to have a stock recovery. What a recovery does is simply allows your phone to recover itself, usually it has options like format your device so that you can restore it to factory settings. So basically, make sure your phone is off, then press the volume up + power button and hold them down until your screen loads a triangle with an ! logo. If you see that then your phone has stock recovery installed.

If that's the case, press the home button to bring up the options, and use the volume keys to move up and down, use camera key to select the choice and the back button to go back.

If you don't have stock recovery, then you'll have to install a permanent recovery as shown on the first page.

So anyway, here is where the update.zip file comes to use. As you get into the recovery, you'll need to apply the update.zip file (the "recovery-update.zip" file that you renamed) and after the update is applied, then you'll access the ClockWork Mod Recovery menu and from there you have a lot more options to fiddle around with, such as performing a nandroid backup.

Anyway, mine shows "ClockworkMod Recovery v3.0.0.8" in the menu.

---------- Post added at 09:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:25 PM ----------

OK I need help badly right now. I just wanted to test if I could use ClockworkMod Recovery on my Star A1000, and it did work. I didn't do anything other than check it out, and I simply rebooted the the phone using the option in the menu.

But I can't get out of the recovery, I already tried to clear the cache and even format it to factory settings but nothing worked. I also tried clearing dalvik cache which I know doesn't relate to this, but ya it didn't work.

****, I think I semi-bricked it??

---------- Post added at 09:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:02 PM ----------

sorry for my long as message and multi post (good thing that XDA's forum automatically merges multiposts).

Anyway I fixed it, **** I was worried there for a second since I thought I would've bricked my brand new Star A1000 that I received in less than a few hours lol.

Anyway to fix the problem that I had, simply take out your memory card, boot into recovery (to remind others again, it's volume up + power button) and just press "apply update.zip".

It'll try to do that but since you took out the memory card, it won't be able to find the update.zip file so it'll revert to its stock recovery menu options. If you don't do that, then you don't see the original options in the stock recovery.

From there, just wipe the cache and it'll work. For some reason, wiping the cache while you're in the ClockworkMod Recovery menu doesn't work, even though it said it completed the operation successfully. You can't get back to the stock recovery menu if you're already applied the update.zip file and already in the ClockworkMod Recovery menu either, so you'll have to follow my instructions to fix this.