[Miscellaneous Android Development] Dib Membrane:
Feedback on Part 1 and Part 2 of the guide from my experience on Windows 7 64-bit

Thank you very much to @FEGuy, @famewolf, et al. for working this out! Unfortunately the rooting step bricked my R2 and I have not been able to recover it, but I'll get to that in a minute. In the meantime, here's some feedback from my use of the guide on my Windows 7 64-bit system:

On my system, at least, the ZTE drivers were definitely necessary as well. ADB couldn't see my R2 until I additionally installed those. I had used the R2's "install drivers" USB connect mode early on after I got it, but that wasn't sufficient, and I tried connecting via that method again while going through the guide, but it had no effect.

It would also be good to clarify that by "the first set of ZTE drivers" you mean the ZTE_Android_USB_Driver.zip ones (right?). Incidentally, Windows Explorer is unable to open the "second set" (ZTE_V889F_V880G_V955_A2_Drivers.zip), though I was able to open it with 7-Zip (I didn't attempt to install them).

I know you're pointing to someone else's guide on that (something I can't do until I get 10 posts, thus my removal of the URLs above), but it'd be worth a mention that the guide is incorrect when it characterizes the F8 method on Windows 7 as "Temporary". Just like the bcdedit method, the desktop watermark remains, and signature enforcement remains off, until bcdedit is run to turn it back on. Even doing F8 and selecting "Start Windows Normally" does not re-enable enforcement.

I'd say "prog_emmc_firehose_8917.mbn" there, to prevent confusion.

I'd also add there that you need to connect it in charge-only mode. Connecting it in file transfer mode does not allow ADB to see it. (And old-school Android users may be particularly confused as to what to do, as the USB connection mode list popup used to include a separate entry for debugging.) EDIT: Sorry, my mistake. Testing with a relative's R2, I see that ADB can work when the phone is connected from Android in MTP mode too, but in my case I had to manually select the ZTE Composite ADB Interface driver before it would work in that mode (it had no default driver, and I again got the warning I referred to below where it said it couldn't confirm compatibility with my device).

Another issue I came across is that if any apps are drawing on top of other apps (for me it was Lux), they need to be disabled temporarily, or Android won't trust your input when you try to authorize your PC for debugging.

Actually, in my case, QFIL auto-detected and selected the port the first time (and subsequent times). EDIT: Sorry, disregard that. Now I see that that's only the case if the phone is already in EDL mode before you run QFIL.

Might be good to elucidate on how to restart at that point, since "adb reboot" doesn't work then, the phone screen is black, and the power button needs to be held for a surprisingly long time before it'll reboot.

Would be good to let users know how to respond to TWRP's "Keep System Read only?" prompt. I assumed I should answer "Yes" to that.

Also, I had some driver issues when booting into TWRP with USB connected. Upon the automatic Windows driver installation, I got "USB Composite Device": "Ready to use", "Z5151V": "Ready to use", but "ADB Interface": "No driver found". In Device Manager, "ADB Interface" showed up under "Other devices", with no driver.

I then tried disabling MTP in TWRP, and that time, I got just a single device presenting as "Z5151V", with "No driver found". When ADB was connected when booted into Android, the driver used was C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\androidusb.sys by Google, so while in TWRP, I went into the Device Manager and did "Update driver" on the ADB Interface and tried to have it look for drivers in that directory, but it didn't work (no doubt due to lack of a .inf file there).

I then chose the option of manually selecting drivers already on computer instead, and selected "ZTE Single ADB Interface". I got a warning that Windows couldn't verify that that driver was compatible with this device, and that things might get hosed, but after saying to go ahead, and then waiting while the window worryingly hung for a couple minutes, ADB worked with TWRP.

---------- Post added at 08:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:51 PM ----------

The "/fstab.qcom" at the end of that command is of course unnecessary; I'd remove it to reduce opportunity for typos.

That was a little vague. I'd say "twice" rather than "a couple times", and then note that you do a standard factory reset from TWRP's main Wipe screen.

That did indeed happen to me, though I wasn't stuck on a black screen, so you could adjust the wording slightly. It just stayed in a boot loop, vibrating and showing the initial white ZTE screen, then it'd quickly flash to black, then repeat. I was able to fix it by going into TWRP and choosing "Reboot to System" as you noted.