[Nook Touch General] nmyshkin:
If you search the forums you will see many posts related to this subject but I've never found one that actually delivered the goods. Even the fabled "Disable all B&N apps" in NookManager leaves the device in a permanent state of conniption. In fact, it leaves the device about where skipping OOBE does and that leads to excessive power drain. Where does the magic power drain come from? Based on my testing it turns out that there is apparently enough left in the booting system to fire up the B&N jars which start whining about the missing apps and probably generate nasty conversations amongst themselves about what a deadbeat you are for not buying books from B&N. These dialogs are continuous, as evidenced from logcats, and it's really a wonder that anything useful can be done with the device under such conditions. Gives you a little more respect for the resilience of Android 2.1

To be clear: this is about removing ALL of the B&N stuff. That means no Reader, no Library, no dictionary. You'll need your own apps for that. You'll also need some kind of launcher and file manager. These are the minimum requirements if you choose to go this route. Surprisingly the Quicknav button system survives the great purge, although most are inoperable. But you can still reassign them with Nook Touch Mod Manager.

The upside

You end up with as near a "tabula rasa" as you can probably get. Too much has been removed from the system by B&N to have a true AOSP Android 2.1 device, but the "bloat" is gone if you never used the B&N services. You get to build your own reader.

The downside

To my knowledge there are no reader apps which run on the NST and can handle DRM epubs. So that's out. However, many libraries with Overdrive also provide Kindle (mobi) versions of books and the Kindle app still works well. You can select books from your local library on your PC and have them magically appear on your device. Of course, there are ways of dealing with the DRM epubs.

Edit: Actually, both Aldiko and Mantano readers can handle Adobe DRM books--that is to say, they can read them, not fulfill them. You need to transfer the books with ADE.

Order of operations

You can do this at any time with a rooted, registered device or with a re-imaged device, skipping OOBE, registration, etc.

NookManager can be used to remove the B&N apps. It actually just sequesters them in a "disabled-app" folder. A list of the apps thus "removed" can be found on the NM GitHub. There is an additional app to remove: CryptoServer.apk. Somehow that missed the chopping block.

Edit: the updated version of NookManager can do all of this, including the removal of the jars (see below).

Of course, you can use the list to remove the apps yourself. Moving them to a "disabled" folder is not such a bad idea in case you change your mind. Down the road you can always delete the folder to free up some space in /system.

The B&N jars reside in /system/framework. You could treat them the same way as the apps. I chose to add ".bak" to each filename, but it amounts to the same thing. Here is a list of the jars to be disabled:

bncloudapi.jar

com.bn.app.crypto.jar

com.bn.app.deviceinfo.jar

com.bn.authentication.jar

com.bn.cloud.jar

com.bn.gpb.jar

com.bn.provider.utils.jar

com.bn.waveformdownloader.jar

After all this slicing and dicing, a reboot is a good idea. A logcat at this point reveals an eerily quiet system. Voila.

Housekeeping

To do a really thorough job there are a few more tasks to complete, but they are not absolutely necessary. At the same time, performing these tasks will in no way compromise your system if you get buyers remorse and want to undo it all.

1. Go to /data/data/ and delete the folders corresponding to the apps you have "removed".

2. Go to /data/dalvik-cache/ and delete the cache items for the apps you have "removed" and the jars you removed/disabled.

3. Reboot.

4. Open the Application Manager and change the filter (use the Menu soft button to access this) to "All". You may see residuals of your removed apps as zero or very small byte ghosts. Most can be "uninstalled". A few may resist or not show the option, but by-and-by this will change so just keep an eye on it when you use the App Manager until all are expunged.

But can I just...?

You're going to ask about keeping the Reader and Library, aren't you? This is a common question. I've asked it myself and worked on the problem many times.

The short answer is: yes, just don't do anything listed above.

The longer answer is that you cannot effectively do a partial disable of the B&N suite. It just doesn't work. The Reader and Library are intimately tied to the hidden apps that converse with B&N servers and generate so much system-level chatter,

especially

if thwarted. I have tried all kinds of schemes. To no avail. So register, root, install your own launcher and forget about the B&N stuff except for the Reader and Library (but

do

disable NookCommunity). The device was designed to run efficiently that way. It's still a great reader when used more or less as intended, even if you never buy a book from B&N.

One last thing

Disabling the B&N system leaves a significant chunk of the Settings app useless or non-functional. I have prepared a special version of my Nook Settings app for devices with the B&N apps disabled. You can find it here.