[Nook Color Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bachon:
Progress - but still some questions.

OK. I'm getting closer - thanks to all for their answers. But I want to better understand these steps. Please bear with me. This is the kind of thing that I find confusing. Many of the nubes (like me) can read the step-by-step procedures. But the experienced folks seldom explain WHY and exactly WHAT the purpose of the steps are. And I'm sorry to say that they sometimes leave out crucial details. I'm not just asking for me - but for the many nubes here. (See below.)

So let's take these suggested steps and use them as Question and Answer to help other nubes like me better understand what is being done and why.

Suggested Step 1. Use Win32DiskImager.exe to burn the "generic-sdcard-v1.3.img" onto your "virgin" sdcard.

Please check my understanding of what these steps represent and correct if I am wrong.

Generic-sdcard-v1.3.img is like a template. So this first step creates the four required partitions on my SDcard. My Nook Color is going to require this to be able to install or update the Android operating system. Is that right?

Suggested step 2. Use Easeus Partition Manager to resize the boot partition on your newly bootable sdcard to 200MB.

The Generic -sdcard-v1.3.img template doesn't make the BOOT partition quite large enough for the zipped files I'm going to need to copy to it. (Boot partition is sometimes called the Root.) So step 2 does that. Am I right?

Suggested step 3. copy "encore_CM72-Mirage-01262012.zip" to root of sdcard, and rename it to "update_CM72-Mirage-01262012.zip".

Before I do this: each of these zipped variants is like the equivalent of the Operating System on a computer hard drive. And there are multitudes of these operating systems out there for my Nook Color. Right?

So now I copy the zipped encore file from my hard drive to the Boot/Root partition of the SDcard. A simple copy and paste is fine for doing this. And I should NOT expand the zipped file. Right?

Question for Clarification here: if this zipped encore file was my very first install of a non-Barnes & Nobel Operating system on my Nook Color - is it still necessary to rename it to update, or can I keep the original name of this zipped file?

Since I already installed CM7.1.0 RC1-encore on my Nook Color, this newer zipped file ("encore_CM72-Mirage-01262012.zip") is an upgrade. So I need to rename the first part of that encore file to be update . My Nook Color won't know what to do if I don't do that.

So I now have one file called "update_encore_CM72-Mirage-01262012.zip" into the Boot/Root Partition on the SD card.

Is this correct?

Suggested step 4. copy "gapps-gb-20110828-signed.zip" to root of sdcard and rename it to "update-gapps-gb-20110828-signed.zip" .

I have no clue as to the purpose of this step. This gapps-gb file file has a completely different number than the encore file. Example: the encore file had the number 01262012 - the gapps file you suggested has the number 20110828.

Another person who responded to my original post mentioned a different gapps file that automatically enlarged the Boot/Root partition to 200 Megabytes. It had a different name and number than the one you suggested. It seems logical to me that the gapps zip and the encore zip must work together.

How can I (and others) know which ones are compatible with one another?

I copied "gapps-gb-20110930-237-signed.zip over to the Boot/Root of the SD card. And I renamed it to "update_gapps-gb-20110930-237-signed.zip".

So, at this point there were two zipped files in the Boot/Root Partition of my SD card. They are:

update_encore_CM72-Mirage-01262012.zip

and

update_gapps-gb-29119839-237-signed.zip

Note: because I don't know the relationship between these two archived zipped files - I have no idea if they are compatible.

You also wrote:

Suggested step 5. Put the scard in the Nook and it should boot and fully install the Android system, CM72, Google apps, and then turn itself off. Turn it back on and you should get the Google Android setup screens.

OK. I did this. And my Nook did the update process. I saw maybe 20 or so files that appeared on the screen (for some reason it happens in landscape mode).

My Nook Color then shut itself off.

So far, so good.

So I press the power button and the Nook Color starts up.

BUT now it tries to do the Update process again. It cannot find the zipped files this time since they have already been expanded. So it just shuts the machine down. Restarting several times results in the very same thing.

The Nook Color does not take me into the Android Operating system where I can begin setting up the apps I want.

So - what went wrong?

My guess is that the Encore and the Gapps files I used were incompatible. Are there other issues that could be the cause if this failure?

Please know that if I can solve this (with the help of some of the more patient people in this forum) my hope is to create a post that can be turned into a Sticky for Nubes. I hope you folks won't give up on me. I'm trying not only to do what is needed for me, but also to help other nubes understand the process.

Thanks to all of you!!!

Bach On