[Asus Transformer TF701] fly a kite:
greetings all, it is i, dorkus, of the house of mallorcus. haha. my name is actually reni.

xda keeps locking me out for some reason. i've now created 2 accounts (3 including the one from which this comment is posted) one even with a dedicated e-mail address just for this, but if i try to log in with either one, i get some "invalid" whatever message. admins: what have i said that was grossly incorrect? those links may not be presented in absolutely the most coherent way, but they're the best reasonable explanations of the procedure involved that i could find with about an hour or 2 of research, which i did because of intending to get one of these devices myself (which has now occurred! yay). besides that, who else with greater experience has chimed in on this thread? yes, i've reset my password, on both accounts. after i do so, both times: same "invalid" message. it's wasted over an hour of my time, when i'm just trying to help these people. it's highly annoying & if it continues, well, they'll just have to go it on their own.

to the point:

as luck would have it,

i was able to acquire one of these devices, still in superb condition, for a great deal from ebay. i have been in contact with Asus support & the word is: it's an EOL product, so the unlock servers have been shut down & there is currently no recourse end users have for unlocking their devices. i feel it's doubtful that they'll fire up a server again, but maybe we can pester them enough to develop a fastboot unlock tool? it sure would have been nice if it worked like that in the first place, but oh well, like the song says:

you can't always get what you want.

i will surely let you all know if am able to make any progress on unlocking my TF701T.

footnote: i also have a TF700 model which is in fact unlocked, has TWRP installed, and is running Android 5.1.1 {zombie-pop} which works a bit better than the Cyanogen mod flavor that it came to me with: somewhat improved user experience, maybe a little snappier too, but speed improvement is fairly minimal. most importantly, almost all of my apps work on it - a few don't even have an installer for Android 4 at the Play Store. the 701 is noticeably more responsive than the 700 model, even running 4.2.2 - the main issue with it for me is not being able to run all of my apps, some of which are purchased. i'd probably sell the 700 if i could get everything on the 701. oh well. it's an excellent reader + portable video viewing device even at stock. it's definitely worth what i paid in the condition received, but it'd be even better if i could unlock the bootloader & get a newer version of Android on it! i could possibly even be so happy that i'd float a couple bux Tim Duru's way, the guy primarily responsible for porting Android 6+7 (the latter of which apparently does not have a working camera) to this device.

footnote #2: the first day i got the 701, i tried to do a firmware update (proper region, latest available. full battery charge. the battery in the one i picked up is in fantastic condition, the thing is practically brand new + functions nicely... but now Asus won't let me unlock it, even though it's well out of warranty! grrrrr) which crashed mid-way & then it proceeded to get into an update / crash boot loop. i was pretty sad for a while, but did not give up & found a way to restore the original firmware (which turned out to be a very minor upgrade) from the SD card, thanks to information in a post here in the xda forums. that post is the link which follows. my thing would still go into fastboot (albeit slightly corrupted) + recovery mode, which enabled an SD card firmware flash to happen {...and lo, my little slab of Jelly Bean was resurrected...} so i did not require the NvFlash tool at all... but it's still there at the provided links in that thread.

to summarize the procedure:

1) format an SD card to fat32

2) download the appropriate firmware from Asus [**please note the region: if you flash the firmware from a wrong region onto your device, you will -hard- brick it + will then be required to use the NvFlash tool**]

3) un-zip the firmware (not completely, just remove nesting - so you have only one zip file)

4) rename the one remaining zip file: t4_sdupdate.zip

5) put that file on the root directory of SD card, then into the tablet (while turned off)

6) invoke recovery mode (power + vol down) & choose the recover [RCK] box (hit volume up, while it's the selected of the 3 choices) and from there the firmware update happens automatically. you can apparently upgrade to any official firmware by this method, but **cannot** downgrade... so i'd suggest leaving it at 4.2.2 until we are 100% sure that there are zero bootloader unlock options, because apparently the unlock tool, from what i understand, only works from the original 4.2.2

without further ado:

https://xdaforums.com/transformer-tf701/tf701t-nvflash-unbrick-solutiontested-t3742848

it's now a few hours later from my original post, near bedtime for me, and the xda gods let me log into this account to make this edit... and it's even allowing URLs now! will wonders never cease? not sure what the problem was earlier, but it was quite annoying. anyway, if it lets me log into the account with the dedicated xda e-mail address, that's the one i'll use in future. username is renigade.