# [Question] Rooting w/o altering flash counter?



## RoyJ (Jun 27, 2012)

Also flashing custom ROMs? My stratosphere died a day after I got it and it just got replaced, so I'm going to root it now. Just want to make sure they can't tell I did anything incase I need to go back to stock and send it in again. Any help is appreciated! Thanks.


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## acejavelin (Jun 5, 2012)

RoyJ said:


> Also flashing custom ROMs? My stratosphere died a day after I got it and it just got replaced, so I'm going to root it now. Just want to make sure they can't tell I did anything incase I need to go back to stock and send it in again. Any help is appreciated! Thanks.


There is no way, they can tell no matter what you do if you have done it, when you flash something (ie. CWM Recovery) via Heimdall/ODIN, it will increment the counter to ONE, after that if you flash everything in CWM it will not increase the counter again. The counter cannot be undone back to ZERO, Samsung Magic makes sure of that, but you can get the phone back to almost pure stock (everything but the counter) including stock recovery if needed at a later time, as long as you can get into the phone and they should take it back under warranty.


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## Crystawth (May 9, 2012)

from what I have seen, you can not return to stock recovery. I could be wrong, but when I tried it didn't work lol.


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## dwitherell (Jul 23, 2011)

Crystawth said:


> from what I have seen, you can not return to stock recovery. I could be wrong, but when I tried it didn't work lol.


If you flash *this* in (ironically enough) CWM recovery you should be back to the stock recovery. There's also a means to the stock recovery *here*.


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## RoyJ (Jun 27, 2012)

Thanks for all the input guys. Got tired and couldn't wait. The flash bug got the better of me. Popped my counters cherry and am running tweaked 2.2 and loving every minute of it. Swag.


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## Crystawth (May 9, 2012)

dwitherell said:


> If you flash *this* in (ironically enough) CWM recovery you should be back to the stock recovery. There's also a means to the stock recovery *here*.


I tried the stock recovery from the second link, maybe i did it wrong. I don't know... I may attempt to return my girl's strat because it keeps locking up and rebooting... (the reason i posted in your rom thread), it has done it twice now on stock rom. I'll give the first link a shot if i choose to do that. thanks


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## Crystawth (May 9, 2012)

dwitherell said:


> If you flash *this* in (ironically enough) CWM recovery you should be back to the stock recovery. There's also a means to the stock recovery *here*.


Thank you Dwitherell, I succesfully flashed stock recovery to my girl's phone... Now to return it =) The darn thing is going all sorts of buggy!


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## Crystawth (May 9, 2012)

Another question Dwitherell...

I know that you can flash tweaked 2.1 via the factoryfs.rfs file and it wont up the flash counter, and if you use an update.zip file (with a different kernel and CWM of course) to change the kernel and add CWM... would it not effectively root, recovery and rom the device while bypassing the flash counter all together?

I'm thinking of trying it that way when i get a replacement for my girl... All i need is to get an update.zip that will replace the kernel and recovery... =)


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## dwitherell (Jul 23, 2011)

Crystawth said:


> Another question Dwitherell...
> 
> I know that you can flash tweaked 2.1 via the factoryfs.rfs file and it wont up the flash counter, and if you use an update.zip file (with a different kernel and CWM of course) to change the kernel and add CWM... would it not effectively root, recovery and rom the device while bypassing the flash counter all together?
> 
> I'm thinking of trying it that way when i get a replacement for my girl... All i need is to get an update.zip that will replace the kernel and recovery... =)


The problem is to get an update.zip to flash in the stock recovery it has to be signed using a super-secret-samsung-key - in other words you can only flash official from verizon/samsung .zips in the stock recovery. That being said - I haven't actually tried this with the stratosphere - I'm basing my claim on how things behave with the charge.


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## selyb (Jan 1, 2012)

can su run from the data partition without having root already?


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## dwitherell (Jul 23, 2011)

selyb said:


> can su run from the data partition without having root already?


I think su being in /system/bin is what gives the phone "root" access - that combined with the SuperUser apk. I would expect su in /data to not do anything of worth, but I could be wrong.


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## Crystawth (May 9, 2012)

And i wouldn't suppose there's any way to get that key lol.


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## RoyJ (Jun 27, 2012)

Well if it's anything like the keys used to lock Motorolas bootloaders, no. They use 256 bit encryption. A "brute force method" would take something like 520,000,000 years to crack. Us old X2 users tried every trick in the boot to get our bootloader unlocked lol. Still no luck. Anyways I don't know how Samsung encrypts their keys but if it's the same as Moto, the one and only way to get the keys would be if Samsung released them or someone on the inside leaks them.

Correct me if I'm wrong.


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