[Desire General] vybztymz:
@Vice83 and anyone else whose interested

How I removed stock apps using SDK

I've had my HTC Desire for 2 weeks (T-Mobile UK, Eclair 2.1)). I'm a newbie to all of this. I spent untold hours on forums and other Android sites, and managed to do Nandroid backup of my phone, and then successfully rooted it (using Unrevoked and a SLAX (Linux) bootable cd). It was really straight forward.

I then installed the AdamG/OpenDesire Sense Froyo v1.0c custom ROM

I then wanted to remove apps that I know I don't need and will never use. There are many online guides on how to do this but, maybe it was me being very dumb, but none of them seemed to work for me. After many more hours reading forums etc I found that all the guides I had read missed out KEY actions\information.

So I've put this together from all the things I've learned from the forums etc. I'd like to give credit \ thanks to all of those who contributed to Android sites, forums etc which provided me with all the info I needed.

!!!!THE FOLLOWING IS

WHAT I DID

TO REMOVE APPS FROM MY (rooted) T-MOBILE HTC DESIRE -

IT WORKED FOR ME

-

BUT MAY NOT WORK FOR YOU CREATE A NANDROID BACKUP FIRST!!!

AND

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!

I installed Java and the Android SDK on an old laptop as I don’t want Java on my main desktop \ laptop.

I then created an Android folder on my pc (C:\Android)

I then copied the following folders from the "android-sdk-windows" folder into it

· Tools

· USB_DRIVER***

· Market-Licensing

*** The default drivers didn't work on my pc\laptop (Win 7 Ultimate, 64bit) so I extracted the drivers contained in a adb_driver_htc.zip file was posted on the My HTC Desire site to the USB folder and successfully installed the driver(s).

With my phone switched on, and in Disk Drive mode, I connected it to my pc with the usb cable. If the phone drivers are not installed / found

· Go to Device Manager.

· Right click on the device that represents your phone.

· Select "update driver software".

· Select "browse my computer for driver software".

· Browse to the C:\Android\usb_driver folder (or to wherever our usb_drivers folder is located, and make sure the "include subfolders" box is ticked).

· Click Next etc to install driver(s).

To test that the drivers were installed and the phone recognised by my pc I

· Opened a command prompt window (Start-run-cmd) and typed the following (don’t include the text in the brackets).

· CD\ (enter\return).

· CD\Android\tools (enter\return).

· adb devices (this listed my phone as HT******SS Recovery).

To exit from adb type EXIT at the “#” prompt. This takes you back to C:\Android\tools directory. Type EXIT to close the command prompt window

Safely remove \ eject the phone from the pc and disconnect the usb

Switch off the phone, and re-start it in Recovery mode by

Holding down the "volume-down" button and pressing power button.

Use " volume-down " button to highlight Recovery.

Press POWER to reboot. Phone will start in Recovery mode i.e. green text on black background.

Still in Recovery mode

, connect phone to Computer via the usb cable.

On the pc, open a command prompt window

Type CD\ and press enter\return

Type CD\Android\tools and press enter/return

Type adb shell and press enter/return

On the phone, use the trackball to highlight Partition Menu and press trackball to select.

Use the trackball to highlight Mount /system and press trackball to select. This bypasses the need for the following adb command: mount –o rw,remount /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system - a command which caused me no end of grief!!!

In the windows command prompt window, type cd /system/app

Type ls –a to get a listing of all the *.apk files in the /system/app directory.

To remove an app type rm appname.apk (where appname is the name of the app to be removed – this command is case sensitive so you must type the app name exactly as it appears in the /system/app directory)

I’ve removed the following apps with the above method without any ill effects, and they no longer appear in my Applications list, or in the system/app directory.

Plurk, FaceBook, Stocks (and com.htc.StockWidget.apk), Twitter, Quick Office and YouTube

From what I’ve read, its not advisable to remove any of the Google apk files due to dependencies etc. People have also reported problems after deleting News, PicoTts and Weather apk’s / widgets – so I’ve left these alone. I’ve not been able to find a definitive list of stock apps that are safe to remove

Anyhoo, I hope this proves useful.

Vybz