Gotchas with Rooting a MyTouch Slide

I got a hold of an extra MyTouch slide for testing and wanted to root it in order to put some a different ROM on there (namely Cyanogen). The MyTouch slide root instructions are fairly well documented and have worked for a lot of people. Unfortunately they did not work for me and I got stuck where 90% of most people get stuck, in the “loop”. I was stuck in this mode for a week and nearly called it quits until I found this Gem last night. I could not get the loop to recognize my device as “offline”. Well, it would, but only for a split second.

I then found out why:

The instructions don’t point this out, and maybe this case is only due to my device but here goes:

• With the USB unplugged from the Phone and computer, Boot into HBOOT (with the phone off, press Power + the Down Volume). Then wait a second for the boot loader to try to find some images and then once its done navigate down to “recovery” (DO NOT GO INTO RECOVERY YET), so at this point “recovery” is just highlighted. Plug the USB into the phone, the other end of the USB should NOT be plugged into anything. So now you should have a phone with a USB cord connected/dangling not connected to the computer. Read this through, then do it: Now you will need to start the loop. Then as soon as you can, plug the USB into the computer. As soon (I mean lightning quick here people) as you feel the USB pop into place ENTER RECOVERY MODE (hit the power button). This has to be done before your phone recognizes that its plugged into the USB. As soon as the phone recognizes its in USB mode it will change from HBOOT to HBOOT with USB (or something like that, you’ll see it at the top of the screen in blue when in HBOOT). Notice: the switch from HBOOT to HBOOT WITH USB is almost instantaneous. Its about 1/2 of 1 second, its that quick. So AS SOON AS YOU feel the USB click (gotta be super fast people), enter recovery mode.
• I had to use the stock SD card that came with the phone, not a new/replacement one. Previously I had a 4 gig card in there from an old phone which was actually bought at Micro Center (had photos/files/etc on it). I read somewhere that you needed to use a stock SD card (I guess the types are different). Long story short: The new card I had in the phone did not allow it to show up as “offline”. I used the stock SD card and magically the phone started showing up in the loop immediately.

That pretty much did it for me. I was able to root the phone, install other roms and then I went full circle and brought it back to factory settings with this ClockworkMod nandroid backup.

So key points: Be fast with plugging in the USB and entering recovery mode. Use the stock SD card not some junk you bought from Micro Center (like me). 🙂