[Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Guides, News, & Discussion] the_wing:
Hi,

I just went through the unlocking process and wanted to share a few things I noticed. It won't be a "unlocking guide", but more kind of a "collection of tips and tricks". Hope this can help someone in sorting things out. Happy unlocking to everyone!

Disclaimer

I am writing these things here with my best knowledge, but I cannot guarantee they are 100% correct. So please take them at your own risk! Feel also free to respond in case I (probably) got something wrong.

"EU/global version" of Mi Pad 4

As someone stated in another thread, and as I understood it, there is no such "global" or "EU" version of this tablet, but there is a "global/EU" ROM you can flash on it. And it seems that in europe there has been some market on these tablets that came with the global ROM preinstalled. As far as I know, the only way to flash the global/EU ROM is to unlock the bootloader, so these sellers had to go through the same process of unlocking. Now the problem is: to unlock the bootloader you require to link the tablet with a Xiaomi account, and you need the same account to unlock it again. So I guess that for these tablets one needs to be careful when buying them with the global ROM preinstalled, as you may need the phone number associated with the Xiaomi account that was set by the seller back then to unlock it again! Fortunately the one I bought came with the official chinese ROM and with no Xiaomi account linked to it, so I could manage to unlock it.

SIM card being necessary to unlock bootloader

I read that in some guides it is stated that you need to have a SIM card to unlock the bootloader installed in the tablet, and some users are asking how to do this on wifi only tablets. From what I've seen, there is no such prerequisite for wifi-only devices (which is kind of obvious, but peaople still ask). You still have to give a phone number to confirm your Xiaomi account as there is the need to enter some security code sent via SMS at some point. But the SIM card holding that number can obviously be on any phone!

About Xiaomi Fastboot drivers for Windows

I had several issues on making the Xiaomi Fastboot drivers working on my Windows PC: On my laptop running Windows 11, I had the issue that whenever the Xiaomi Unlock Tool was trying to connect, the Fastboot mode on the tablet just stopped with the message "press any key to shutdown". This seems to be a driver issue on some USB3 ports. Someone claimed there is a solution (see this post), but I used a Windows 10 laptop instead (also with only USB3 ports) and it worked OK there. Also, sometimes I connect the tablet via USB in Fasboot mode and I get no response on Windows (as nothing is attached). I solved it by uninstalling the device and re-installing the drivers manually that are provided in the Xiaomi Unlock Tool "driver" folder.

To check whether the drivers are working, just connect the tablet via USB while in Fastboot mode and check the Windows device manager. If device "Android Bootloader Interface" is properly installed (I got Xiaomi Drivers v16.0.0.0), you should be all set. If you get "Android device" or something with a question mark on it, I suggest to install manually the drivers (right click on the device, select "update drivers", then "Browse on my computer", and point to the "driver\win10" or "driver\xp-win7-win8" folder of the Xiaomi Unlock Tool).

If you have fastboot in your Windows PATH, read here, otherwise just ignore this

It seems that the Xiaomi Unlock Tool has a "fasboot.exe" in its own folder, which it has to use to unlock the bootloader. In my case, I already had adb and fastboot in my Windows PATH (so that I could just type "adb" in any CMD), and I think that the tool was using my fastboot version instead of its own one. The issue I had is that for some reason, the unlock process was hanging on 99%, and the tablet was then exiting fastboot and booting back to system. I checked the log and it seems to me that some fastboot commands were failing. As soon as I removed fastboot from Windows path, it magically worked. So my advice here is to simply remove whatever fastboot you have in the Windows path before using the unlock tool.

Unlocking steps I did

Finally, here's what I did to unlock it. Again, disclaimer: I don't know if these steps are 100% correct, but they worked in my case. So follow them at your own risk!

I did it on a Mi Pad 4 Wifi with the stock chinese ROM (running MIUI 10.3.2 & Android 8.1.0).

Go to Settings -> Mi Account and login to your Xiaomi account on the tablet, or if you don't have any, make one. Make sure the phone number you entered is reachable.

Go to Settings -> Additional settings -> Developer options and make sure "OEM Unlocking" and "USB Debugging" are turned on.

Still on the Developer options, go to "Mi Unlock Status". If it says "Unlocked", well guess what., you can stop here :). If not, tap on "Add account and device" and wait for the success message. If you get something like "try later" (my case), what I did is to logout and re-login on the Xiaomi account. I then got the "success" message finally.

Download the Xiaomi Unlock Tool from here. Extract somewhere but do not start yet.

Open Windows Device Manager (Win+R, enter "devmgmt.msc").

Turn off the tablet and boot to Fastboot (Vol. Down + Power buttons). Now connect the tablet via USB.

First check on the tablet: if it shows "press any key to shutdown", then you have a driver issue. Please see this post for the solution, or try using a different PC.

Then, check on the device manager. If you see just "Android" with a question mark popping up, then you need to install the drivers. If you see "Android Bootloader Interface", then you are all set. If you don't see anything, then you need to uninstall and reinstall the drivers instead.

To install the drivers: right click on the device with question mark, select "update drivers", then "Browse on my computer", and point to the "driver\win10" or "driver\xp-win7-win8" folder where you extracted the Xiaomi Unlock Tool. After installing the drivers, try to boot to fastboot a second time. If you don't see the previously mentioned "press any key to shutdown", then you are all set.

To uninstall the device: On Windows Device Manager menu, go to "View" -> "Show hidden devices". You should find a greyed out "Android Bootloader Interface". Right click on it and select "Uninstall". Then, repeat the process again (boot to fastboot etc) and hopefully you will get the "Android device" with question mark where you can install drivers on.

Before starting the unlock tool, make sure you don't have any adb or fastboot in your windows PATH. You can check it by simply typing "fastboot --version" on any Windows CMD and see if it does something. In case you have, you better remove it, as the unlock tool has its own version of fastboot packed with it and you better let it use that one instead.

Once drivers are installed, start the Unlock Tool and login to your Xiaomi account. Then, once you see "not connected to the phone", boot the device to Fasboot again and quickly connect it via USB. If you see "Please wait 168 hours" or something like that (I did not see any of that), then most of the guides say that unfortunately you have to wait.

If you see the "Unlock button" not being grayed out anymore, then go for it. Get rid of the annoying popups saying "you are a bad person if you unlock", and finger crossed everything goes smooth!

Cheers,

Michele