[Nook Color General] bobstro:
A few folks have asked for a step-by-step, so I thought it might be helpful to have a copy here on XDA. GMPOWER has recently created a thread on his ManualNooter for NC 1.4.1 which should be considered the authoritative source on the basic rooting process. I'm going to leave this post here to collect other tips & tricks that can be done post-root.

I want to emphasize that I did

none

of the original work required for this effort to succeed. I only seem to follow instructions carefully, and know just enough to figure out what instructions to ignore. I'm posting this here because I'm hoping other will benefit from skipping a few of the painful steps I went through to get this working.

All credit goes to GMPOWER, Dalingrin, Roustabout and the wonderful crew at XDA that create these tools to let us get more out of our devices!

TARGET AUDIENCE

This guide is for anybody wanting to root the stock Barnes and Noble 1.4.1 firmware. Is it worth it? Probably not. With all the options available today, reverting to B&N makes sense if, and only if, if you want to use any of the following B&N capabilities:

Read to me (mostly children's book)

Enhanced content (e.g. Conde Nast magazines such as Wired, New Yorker, though some of these are becoming available via 3rd party sources.)

Newpaper or magazine subscriptions (auto-update)

B&N Free in-store reading

Support from friends with stock Nooks or B&N (conditional upon being rooted)

The B&N reader experience and shell. The B&N Android Nook app is not the same thing as their firmware experience, at least not yet. Someday, they may update the B&N Nook Android app, but it is pretty poor right now. If you want to read B&N stuff, then 1.4.1 is a big deal.

If these apply, consider keeping your NC at B&N 1.4.1. If you want 3rd party content (e.g. Kindle), then root it, but make sure you've got it configured NOT to auto-update, since B&N has killed sideloading with OTA updates.

If you will not be using B&N content, then go with Cyanogenmod or similar. The B&N firmware suffers a

lot

of shortcomings compared to the "full tablet" experience:

Lots of settings are missing.

Getting a 3rd party keyboard to work is possible, but very kludgy at present. I had luck with SwiftKey by copying the apk from /data/app to /system/app as directed in NookColor Tools.

If you're looking to install CyanogenMod or other firmware, check out Koopakid08's A Noobs Guide to Getting Started with a Custom Rom on the Nook Color.

BACKGROUND

I started out reading and trying the procedure described the XDA thread on rooting 1.2 and 1.3:

[NC][1.2][1.3] ManualNooter 4.6.16 - xda-developers

However, it is critical to realize that the directions early on in that thread

do not work for 1.4.1

. The magic starts at about page 160. Below is my distillation of this information in easy-to-digest form (hopefully).

PROCESS

You need to create a ClockworkMod (CWM) bootable SD card to reset your device back to standard B&N firmware, and to install the "manualnooter" root kit. Colchiro has posted a nice summary over at Androidforums. His guide includes the latest (3.2.0.1) CWM versions.

Restore to stock B&N ROM. I'd been running CM7.1 on emmc, so had to go through the process of restoring to a stock B&N 1.3 ROM. Depending on the age of the article you read on how to do this, you may have problems either formatting /data or get into a boot loop at the 'n' logo. You need a current CWM to be able to successfully format /data. If /data is not properly formatted, you will get a bootloop at the B&N splash screen when you restart. Not a big deal to fix, but you can waste a lot of time on this. As of this writing, CWM 3.2.0.1 is the latest, and should allow you to format partitions without problems.

After restoring to B&N 1.3, I re-registered my device to make sure B&N functionality would work. After all, the only reason to bother with 1.4.1 is if you intend to use B&N content. Otherwise, save yourself the trouble. NOTE: We are not root yet.

Update to 1.4.1. I got my copy of 1.4.1 directly from B&N [EDIT 01162012: I have verified that the latest as of this date still works as described here.] Your Nook Color will also update to the latest if you just let 1.3 unrooted go to sleep

if you don't have ClockWorkMod installed to eMMC

. I have confirmed that this procedure works with the following nookcolor_1_4_1_update.zip md5sum: 2a27f54b65431a096af4f07967bcd6b5 (post-Christmas 2011)

Once 1.4.1 was running unrooted, I then followed GMPOWER's efforts over at XDA. The key is to run an updated version of manualnooter that does not make the database updates. As of this writing, his latest 5.01.24 can be found in post 1745. So far as I know, the official manualnooter repositories have not been updated.

Copy manualnooter-5.01.24.zip (or whatever the latest is) to your bootable SD recovery card.

Boot the recovery SD card.

Install manualnooter-5.01.21.zip.

Remove the recovery SD card and reboot your NC. It boots any card present, so this is kinda important. Behold the pretty startup screens. You should have root at this point.

Be sure to select Zeam as your initial launcher. Note that if you press the 'n' key at this point, you'll be taken back to the B&N interface, and not have ready access to anything non-standard. This is not a big deal. Simply press 'n'->Search and enter zeam in the search box. It should locate zeam. Select it to launch.

To enable 3rd party apps to load, you must open the NookColor Tools program. There's a magic check box that enables 3rd party apps at the top. By default, the text is white on white, so impossible to see. Select that box

twice

- to uncheck then recheck (toggle) it. When you are done, it should be checked.

To get 3rd party apps to show up in the Nook interface, download Nook Color App Manager from the Market. HINT: Don't go overboard and select everything. Select only those things you really want to see in the B&N Walled Garden. You might also want to select the HomeCatcher app (included in ManualNooter) to allow using the 'n' button to go to your launcher of choice, but I do not. My philosophy is to keep the B&N interface as much as possible, or I wouldn't have gone to all this effort. When I need "power user" functions, I just launch zeam using the search procedure listed above.

Disable OTA updates. B&N auto over-the-air (OTA) updates apparently break root, and lately, sideloading. There seems to be some debate about what works best for this, but I've gone for modifying the devicemanager.db using SQLite Editor to open devicemanager.db and change registry->com.bn.device.fota.mode from "auto" to "manual". You can use an alternate method with a free sqlite3 binary from the command line. So far, no nasty OTA surprises.

COMMON PROBLEMS

Here are some common problems and what to do about them:

Can't overclock. GMPOWER has indicated that an overclocked kernel is not provided as of manualnooter-5.1.24. You need to install Dalingrin's overclocked kernel for B&N 1.3 (NOTE: Dalingrin's hosting site for these files seems to be offline. Doncarauana has posted a set of temporary links to the kernel files you can try. You will also need a copy of Dalingrin's Nook Color Tweaks installed.

Can't format /data when restoring to stock firmware. You probably followed an old guide on how to do this. Depending on the age of your NC, the version of CWM you're using may not handle partition changes. You need to update CWM. See Step 1, above.

Bootloop at the 'n' logo when trying to restore B&N firmware.You probably goofed. Hard as it is to believe, it's very easy to miss the fact that /data wasn't formatted. This is the same problem as the preceding problem. Just follow Step 1, above, and be sure /data actually gets formatted.

1.4.1 is rooted, but unable to install anything from Android Market or Amazon App Store. When this happens, everything appears to be working, but after downloading, apps will fail to install. They key is to use GMPOWER's latest manualnooter and do not ever, even

once

, install one of the older versions. Refer to Steps 4 and 10, above. I had to restart from scratch to make up for not paying attention and running the old manualnooter versions. Something to do with a database patch that causes problems.

Facebook and other apps are missing from Android Market. UPDATE: This is fixed with GMPOWER's manualnooter-5.01.24.zip. (For other apps: A simple workaround is to install the app onto another Android device, then use Android Assistant to make a backup .apk and copy that to the Nook Color. If you only have a Nook Color Android device, you can create a bootable SD with CyanogenMod (see above) and install to that, then use this procedure to copy the .apk over.)

UPDATES

2/14/2012: Updated to add link to manual procedure for blocking OTA updates using sqlite3.

2/13/2012: Updated to include link to GMPOWER's thread on his ManualNooter for NC 1.4.1.

2/6/2012: Updated links for Dalingrin's overclocked kernel to include Doncarauna's temporary links.

1/24/2012: Updated to reference GMPOWER's manualnooter-5.01.24, restored references to Dalingrin's OC'ed 1.3 kernel.

1/22/2012: Updated to reference GMPOWER's manualnooter-5.01.21, remove references to APPS2SD not working. It's working now! Removed overclock kernel as a concern. GMPOWER's latest MN includes it. Added link to Colchiro's SD HOWTO at Androidforums.

1/16/2012: Updated description of 1.4.1 update now that I've verified this procedure works with the latest, and added link to SQlite OTA blocking procedure.

1/11/2012: Updated link to GMPOWER's ManualNooter update to be more concise.