yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Magnus369:
not quite understanding how root breaks warranty

While I realize I'm a noob to all this, and I understand that vizio is getting payments from hulu and netflix for having their crap software on the tablets (yes, it's crap software. I'm working on how to stream my own stuff from in my home to my tablet instead... lousy shows on hulu+ and dvd rentals that suck from netflix aren't worth my dime). However, I truly fail to see how rooting voids a warranty. Having been an systems' admin for well over 20 years now, that's like telling me that if I log in with the admin/root account on any of my systems (workstations, servers, switches, vm's, etc.) that I've just voided a hardware warranty.

How is it possible that root can be used to cause any kind of hardware damage? Short of overheating I suppose, but even then that's just crap hardware design, and honestly you deserve it if you manage to cook a system through stupidity. But for issues that I'm seeing with the tablet now-

1) lousy SD card layout. Really? what genius thought this stupid idea would work? hell, set it up the way we're used to, and reclaim that 2GB for app space. This tablet would be pretty damn sweet in that case.

2) The atrocious home screen/window manager. Another really bad design. I realize it's my first tablet, especially coming from HTC phones where I had SenseUI (which I'm coming to find out I love apparently) to this... it's disgusting. I'd rather something where I can drop my widgets on the home page and have to open the app list manually. This design sucks.

3) no support for some playback formats. I don't know if this is a hardware issue or not, but honestly I had been hoping to play mkv's on here. Some of my video's I can play, but not most, and that's using 3rd party apps. the playback I get is slow and miserable, but given that this is a single core system, I spose that's my bad.

Vizio, give me root. Let me change out your lousy software, and I'll gladly delete hulu and netflix, as I don't want either. I'd rather run my own custom rom anyway, just the same as I do on my other systems. If hp,dell, nor supermicro can't void my warranty for installing a particular OS, you shouldn't be able to trash my hardware warranty just because I don't want to run your particular android rom.

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And I'm debating on posting this in a letter to vizio. I don't know a better place to drop this, save for this thread. if you guys do, lemme know and I'll do so.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] auburnham:
Thanks for the heads-up, guys. I had just started the 1.5 update when I thought I should check this thread. After seeing your warning I powered the unit down to stop the update. No harm done after reboot & froze the update service.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
First i do understand that they need to prevent root, as root could enable a user to rip the content of nook and kindle app off the device. The device is so cheap because of those apps being there and thus Barnes and Noble and Amazon, Hulu and Netflix have a word to say about this as well. However, bugging the online chat support with this has virtually no effect as this is just first level user support, some students sitting in something like a callcenter with a fixed set of answers and absolutely no knowledge about the technical side of this.

Root does in fact not void the warranty on the hardware itself, but it does void the software warranty. That is why nearly all manufacturers try to prevent rooting in this or that way.

However, as already said, what a mans mind can do, another one can undo, unfortunately the userbase on this device is a very small one as of yet and so is the range of developers that work on it. We just can hope that with growing popularity we gain more devs as well and soon can find a way to root it again.

For the launcher thing, nobody stops you from installing a 3rd party launcher, i did install adw launcher (ok, i had to sideload it as it is not available on market) but you can also install whatever launcher you prefere. The only thin i miss is a normal wallpaper support, but adw shows the wallpaper i selected for lockscreen, so also no real problem, but adw launcher ex does not show any wallpaper.

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tapatalked from vizio vtab1008
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] KJ5ES:
Well I have a couple of issues...

1) I bought this device...so I get to decide what update is mandatory. Not the seller. Can you imagine walking down the street and a team of people forcing you to allow them to put new buttons on the shirt you bought from them just because they think the new ones are better? Would you tolerate that? Then why is it ok with my toy if not ok with other products?

2) The new update is only a matter of desire away from someone rooting it. If you can undo root, we can redo it.

3) Why not spend the time giving us a standard droid desktop, or fixing the messed up SD card thing? DO this and you win customers. Fight us for control of our device and you piss people off and turn them from your products.

OK I'm done. If you have root, just freeze and wait til the new root-resistant upgrade is re-rooted.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] marvin02:
Overclocking the CPU, under-volting or over-volting the CPU are just a few things that can be done with root that will cause hardware damage. But - it should be those actions that void your warranty, not the simple fact of rooting.

I hate to keep pointing out that Vizio is not alone on using internal memory at the /sdcard mount point. Unfortunately this seems to be the trend.

Easily fixed with a third party launcher. Some info.

More likely a legal/licensing issue.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Magnus369:
I appreciate the info on the launcher, I'll be seeing if I can find something that let's me do what I want. As for the SD card mount issue, I never said they were the only one to do it, merely griping about how stupid and useless it is.

And who on earth is bill2?

EDIT: marvin02- thanks for the launcher link! like I said, I'm a noob, but so far I love zeam!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] marvin02:
Not sure what happened with the quote - I fixed it.

Zeam is one of the lightest launchers on resources. I took one look at the VTAB's default launcher and replaced it.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jamesgb:
I installed AnTek App Manager and froze the Vizio update service. Now after rebooting my VTAB will only go into the "android system recovery <3e>" menu. Anyone know how to "unfreeze" the vizio update service or some other way get my tablet to boot up again?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
You are the second brick, there is at the moment no way to revive it. Id suggest to bring it to your dealer and get it replaced. But do at least a factory reset first.

Edit: i have added a warning about freezing with AnTek Taskmanager to my thread.

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tapatalked
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] abtxpress:
I have not been asked to update. I have not frozen the updater either.

Almost all the launchers work, but you have to download from their web sites, not the market. I personally like go launcher ex. But have tried zeam, ics launcher, adw, and claystone launcher.

As for wallpapers, I installed a market app called "wallpaper set &". It will make any web image your wallpaper. So if you want a certain pic you have to upload to like fb or photo bucket then long press the image and select set as wallpaper. It works, a pain yes, but works.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
With launchers i had different expiriences, ics launcher force closes occasionally and as already mentioned adw ex does not display wallpapers.

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tapatalked from vizio vtab1008
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] marvin02:
QuickPic will work to set wallpapers, but a restart is required to see your wallpaper.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Just found out that the launcher needs to be restarted (adw has an option for this) to show the wallpaper.

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tapatalked from vizio vtab1008
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ittakesevil:
I'm getting one of these for christmas and have read the rooting instruction. One concern is when i first boot up it will update. I am a noob and have never used a tab or andriod 2.3 before. So does anyone know if it will automatically update on first bootup?

Also from what I've seen around this tablet is very popular considering sam's club has them on backorder and is soldout. So I hope more devs will show up.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
It will not update automatically, but you will be nagged by the update service to do it unless you freze it using titanium backup.

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tapatalked
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nb45cl:
I also used AnTek App Manager to free update service, rebooted, and get the recovery screen. I can't get around it.

---------- Post added at 04:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:24 AM ----------

Can someone capture their system files to an update.zip? Wouldn't those then be able to be installed since they'd be properly signed? I found a link to someone who did this and put the files at dropbox. But the zip file is now gone.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jamesgb:
To tag off of what nb45cl said - I read somewhere (maybe it was earlier in this thread) that AnTek App manager actually uninstalls the program when you choose to freeze it. I wonder if someone were to be able to backup the VIA update service somehow so we could install it via the recovery boot???
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
There are enough devices arround to get the filed from, but we would need vizios private key to sign the update.zip...

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tapatalked
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jamesgb:
Well, in theory the files are still on the Vizio since AnTek App Manager can reinstall them by simply choosing "unfreeze" (if we could get the device to boot back up). Is there any way to get at the file system while booted to the recovery mode that would allow us to reinstall the app?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
I have figured out how to enable 'adb' access in recovery. Please see my post #9 in the following thread

Enable adb access in recovery

However, for some reason it does not seem to work in Windows according to others but works on my Mac. Unfortunately, this method requires modification of the /recovery partition prior to having problems.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jamesgb:
rprr - in reading through that thread it looks like someone was able to backup the system partition... The recovery boot gives the option to restore from SDcard - is there a procedure to put the system image on the SD card to restore it??? Can you send me your system partition and I'll give it a try?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
That someone was me.

I don't know how that would work. I could send you my modified system partition image but I am not sure how you will use that to flash the /system partition. Also it is quite big, compresses at 150 MB.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jamesgb:
Oh ya, guess that was you :)

I really don't know how it would work either. I don't know what kind of file it is looking for. I do know that when it says you can restore from SDCard it is refering to the external SDCard because I can browse it and see the folder structure I created with some pictures and movies on it. Do you know what kind of file the built-in recovery boot is looking for? All it says is something like "apply update from SDCard"... Is it referring to update.zip that I see mentioned various places? And I wonder what it would be updating - the system or the recovery partition?

Also, I did the wipe function to clear off my personal data, but obviously this doesn't restore it to an "out of the box" state as someone else stated that even after doing the same procedure they still had root access. Does the wipe function delete all programs that were installed?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] acgc:
Another way to block the evil update

For what it's worth, I found another, less invasive way to block the update from happening.

I ran a packet sniffer and found that the tablet, when going out to check for update, the traffic was going to 107.22.191.80:443. whois indicates this is an Amazon AWS server... blah blah...

... So I blocked it with my router (running Tomato).

I found the next day, a similar query was going to 107.22.88.34, so I blocked it too.

Then today, another address. All addresses seem to have the form 107.22.x.y.

If I direct the browser to https://107.22.191.80, I found a login page for UpdateLogic... (ignoring the invalid cert...) So, I went to UpdateLogic.com, and prominently advertised on their home page is that they are the service provider for managing firmware updates for Vizio.

So, I guessed that Tomato was using iptables style input for the IP blocking, and tried 107.22.1.1/16 in my router. It worked perfectly and now the entire range 107.22.x.y is blocked. I probably could also have done it in the tablet itself via iptables, but haven't tried that. Now if I explicitly go out to find an update, the update utility claims the internet connection is lost (hah.. sure it is... )

This seems safer to me than other methods of freezing others have done.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] richard96816:
trap doors for roots

It seems that a few trap doors scattered about after a root would be helpful in making root easier to re-establish after a Vizio destructive update.

Richard
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jamesgb:
Good find and very interesting... However, I don't think that would work for most people, at least not me... I take my tablet with me and connect it to various wireless networks including tethering with my cell phone, so as soon as I connected to one of those networks it would be able to do an update anyway...

-James
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] abtxpress:
I have frozen the vizio updater with bloat/ciq freezer free from the market. It only freezes the app. Thank god it has stopped bugging me!!!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jamesgb:
Just as a word of caution - you may want to check with the app vendor to find out exactly how they "freeze" apps... The program I downloaded also just "froze" the app but it bricked my tablet. I read somewhere that the app I used actually uninstalls/reinstalls the app each time you freeze/unfreeze and that is probably why my tablet won't boot up anymore.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] abtxpress:
It says it just freezes it to keep it from running in the background, it does not remove the app. It actually warns against removing system apps because it can screw up your system. Reboots with no problems as well.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jamesgb:
Ahh, good to know.

I hope someone out there comes up with a fix for this. I'd rather keep the Vizio if I can fix it, but if not I'll return it and probably get something else that is a little faster :) While the Vizio was/is great for the price, it was pretty frustrating dealing with the lagging and choppy scrolling. I was hoping for a Gingerbread update like Vizio had mentioned they were going to do, but now with Android 4.0 out I'm thinking upgrades are up in the air. I wonder how this little tablet would do with Android 4.0 - not sure if it requires more resources.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
i was trying to do this, but i was not able to mount that partition, any idea how to do this? if i try

mount -t ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p5 /mnt/recsys

i get "invalid argumant"

also if i try busybox mount... i get a longer answer saying exactly the same.

any help would be appreciated and it would be cool to get a complete guide to help others as well.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nb45cl:
This is what Vizio Chat says:

There wouldn't be an update on the SD card. I would suggest calling in to 877.698.4946 for assistance. There is a reset in a hidden menu that they can do that I cannot that might fix that issue for you. You are getting a strange error due to the update. Doing that reset might get rid of that for you.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
That won't work as mmcblk0p5 is an emmc partition and only contains the gzipped recovery file. You cannot actually mount it and modify it. Please follow the method I suggested in this thread (post #9)

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1363230
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
hmm, tried to dd your recovery-new image, but if i connect my tablet it seems to connect in usb mass storage mode, there is no android usb device in device manager. but the recovery seems functional so far.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rprr:
Hmmmm ..... dylanparrish also reported the same issue. I just don't understand why that is happening. It seems to work fine on my Mac.

Edit to add: When it connects in mass storage, can you browse the directories? I assume that since it is an ext4 partition you might need those drivers for Windows.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] abtxpress:
Well crap stains. DON'T USE A FREEZER OF ANY KIND. I used bloat/ciq. Rebooted and worked fine yesterday. But today my battery was low, so I powered off. Got home at lunch, plugged it in, powered up, bricked.

Support said it has to search for an update during a power up. So freezing a start up app will prevent a boot.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] acgc:
It should be possible to do this directly on the tablet also, but I haven't tried it yet. E.g.: execute the following from a command shell:

su

iptables -A INPUT -s 107.22.1.1/16 -j DROP

-kb
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
Not sure if iptables is supported...

@rprr: win7 PC is already shut down and its late over here will test tomorrow...

But i think it just mounts sdcard and ext-sd as a USB storage. However, as the win7 PC i use is not mine i think I'm gonna install win7 to my vista laptop soon and on this occassion i will also set up a Linux system on the second HD and dual boot through BIOS bootmenu.

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tapatalked from vizio vtab1008
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jamesgb:
When you say support were you referring to Vizio support? What did they tell you to do since it was bricked? Return it to the store, send it in for repair?

-James
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FadeFx:
I more and more doubt that the support has enough technical knowledge in its knowledge base to answer our root questions.

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tapatalked from vizio vtab1008
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] abtxpress:
Guy pretty much said I was on my own. Cannot take it back for a replacement anyways, Walmart has discontinued the sale of the vtab. Or at least I dont see it on walmart.com or at any of my 3 local walmarts. I was just in there last weekend looking for one for my son.

EDIT: I think the only way to fix this is get the signing key from vizio....
[Motorola Droid 3] spacecasespiff:
I really like my d3 but I feel like its old already with rumors of the d4 so quick and the samsung nexus coming out. It seems that the market is flooded with android phones. Even my friends that have the iphone ask " why are there so many android phones that come so quickly" and I agree with them. I love android and will always have one. When I read things that say android has the market share I can't but wonder if its do the the huge number of android phones. I wish google would grow a pair and stop this. I would love to see just a few android phones " all stock " come out and show people that don't reallly know what a stock android phone is. I think its moto and htc, and samsung messing it all up with there ui's. And because of this is why the d3 will get lost. And its a great phone. Their are a lot of great phones but you buy one and a month later 3 more that are faster bigger come out. The only good thing about all the phones is that they all try to out do the other. So the technology gets better faster. But I would love to see less and more stock phones. Im tiered of explaining moto blur to people. My friends that have the iphone are right when they say what's wrong with stock android that the manfactures have to hide it. They have a good point. But anyway I just thought this needed to be said and now I wait 8 months till my upgrade and then I will get my samsung nexus and im back on stock forever. Also I know that we have roms and your phone can be stock with these but its still not the same.
[Motorola Droid 3] doogald:
Google has little control over whether an OEM skins Android or not - Android is open source, and whuile I believe that they have specific requirements to get the Google market and apps, the OEMs are free to alter the framework. Of course, it is not the OEMs who simply make the phones - they are trying to sell to carriers, who also have specific demands for specific features (i.e., locked down bootloaders, so users will not be able to install apps that do things like offer hotspot service for free, plus carriers get money from software companies to pre-load specific software on the phones.) It is surely not Google who is controlling when specific makers are offering specific models (with the exception of the Nexus models.)

Google does contract with OEMs roughly once per year to make the Nexus devices, which are pure Android phones (Nexus One January 2010; Nexus S in December 2010; Nexus Prime November 2011.)

Are there too many phones? I would rather have too many great phones coming out frequently than too few phones coming out less frequently. Seriously, even with a Droid 4 coming out 6 months after a Droid 3 (if the release is indeed that tight), the Droid 3 hasn't suddenly become a terrible phone. It's a dual-core OMAP 1 GHz phone with 512 MB of RAM and a very high dpi high resolution display with reasonable battery life. This phone will remain usable for all of a typical 20 month Verizon contract commitment, just as the Droid Incredible remains entirely usable now 18 months or so after its first release.

That's my opinion, anyway. I think it's healthier to be happy that there are so many great phones pushing the envelope so frequently than the alternative - having to wait and try to guess the perfect time to upgrade to a new device. Choice can be hard, but I'd rather be able to choose between many, many models of cars than have Chevy, Ford, Toyota, etc. come out with a single model each every year.

Apple's way is very smart for them, but they do not have to compete with other OEMs making iOS phones. Android OEMs do need to be mindful of each other, and I think both ways are fine. If you are worried that too many phones are being released too fast, then by all means, switch to an iPhone and you'll be able to relax more, or simply buy whichever Nexus device is available at the time you are able or want to upgrade, as they are also now on an approximate yearly cycle. If you have to switch to another carrier to do so, that will surely send a message to the carrier that you are using that if they wanted to keep your business, they should have offered a Nexus device of their own.
[Motorola Droid 3] spacecasespiff:
Very good points. Just makes me a little mad that I get a phone and and one that I would rather have comes out a few months later. But then again I did not know that at the time. I just nee to maybe wait before jumping in. I do think that the samsung nexus will be the best selling phone of all time. I think that will send a measage to the carriers that stock it always better. I would like to think that stock it better now that 4.0 is out.