[General Questions and Answers] czdraconis:
Hi all,

I'd like to politely ask for your help with adding Google Play to my friend's tablet which unfortunately doesn't provide this app in factory setting.

First of all I'd like to mention that I've searched here before (and other sources over the internet as well) and found many threads with similar issues. Still I was unable to get everything working because of some problems that I'm not able to solve as I'm still just a user... Unfortunately it seems that each device is unique and requires a little different stuff to reach the goal.

So here's some basic information about the device:

Maxell Maxtab C8

Android 4.0.4

Kernel version: 3.0.8+

Here's what I was able to do so far:

Successfully rooted the device

Successfully set -rw to /system (using the "Mount /system (-rw / -ro)" app

I've tried many various Google Play installers including:

Android Market_install_files.zip

PlayStore_v4.6.17.apk found somewhere here in the forums

And about 5 more other without any success. Result is that Google Play is there but it doesn't work - I mean the icon has been added, Gmail account has been "assigned" to it during its first run and then every time I try to run Google Play there occurs an error saying that "Google Play stopped working" and it simply won't run. I also tried the simple solution with "Android-Market_install_files" package (4 apps) - as I found out it's the official way how to use Google Play on devices where it's not preinstalled. Still it didn't work as well - again ended up with the same error (stopped working). But there is maybe some kind of problem with the installation because two of four .apk files included in the "Android Market_install_files.zip" package cannot be installed as the device tells me that this app cannot be installed because of the conflicting signature (I found more about this here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...g-package-by-the-same-name-with-a-conflicting). I'm using files signed by Google. Advices are to firstly uninstall the original apps and then install these but I'm not able to uninstall as I can't find them. Guess these are some kind of system apps and I'm not sure where to find them exactly. Still no luck even using Root Explorer. These apps are called "OneTimeInitializer-signed.apk" and "GoogleServicesFramework-signed.apk". I think maybe Google Play from this package could work but the problem is caused by the device which doesn't overwrite the original apps (because of the signature).

Currently I've also found GApps Manager (http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2589167) - I think this might work but I'm not able to test it at all. Simply I can't find how to get this Maxell tablet into recovery mode to find the "install from zip file" option.

Interesting is that there is no "Phonesky.apk" file in the device's memory...

Sorry for my post being soooo long but I'd like to provide as many additional information as possible.

Could you please give me advice how to install GApps on Maxell Maxtab C8 device or any other solution?

This could look easy for many of you but I'm working on it over two weeks now and I'm really clueless, even more when there are users confirming that Google Play works with this device. So I hope you're be so glad to help. Any help will be highly appreciated! Thanks!

With kind regards

PJ