A Guide To Gaining Root Access On The HTC Hero Android Phone

It is an increasingly popular activity by many electronics owners to hack their electronic device and alter it from the way it was manufactured. This has been a popular practice for the Playstation Portable, the Nintendo Wii, the Xbox 360, an iPod, a Zune and more. In modern times, this practice has extended to hacking, or “rooting,” a user’s mobile phone.

What exactly is rooting?

This is more of a common activity among phones that have applications or are newer and from the smartphone family. Rooting a phone is the main factor and difference between having a regular phone like everyone else in the world has and having one that allows the user to change certain otherwise unchangeable parts of the phone. This may include but may not be limited to changing icons or fonts.

Why do people root their mobile phones?

Homebrew applications are applications not generally found on the marketplace and normally consist of homemade programs that can be downloaded for free. Homebrew applications are possible to install when rooting a mobile phone. It is perhaps among the most popular reasons for wanting to root a mobile phone.

Some reasons for wanting to root a mobile phone may include, as previously mentioned, the ability to install homebrew applications as well as having the knowledge that the user is in full control of their phone.

What about the HTC Hero? Can that be rooted as well?

One of the phones that can handle being rooted is the HTC Hero. Instructions on how to root this particular phone are finally, at long last, available for all HTF Hero users to take and follow. Keep in mind, however, it is highly recommended to carefully consider whether or not it is worth the risk to damaging the phone. If not done correctly, consequences may occur, such as damage to the phone.

How to Root the HTC Hero

1. Firstly, download the following file as located here. Proceed to download another file from here.
2. Install it to the HTC device in question. To do this, connect it to the computer using a USB cable. Mount the device’s SD card by way of the HTC Alerts Menu. Proceed to install using the drive that Windows has just detected.
3. Extract the two downloaded zip files into separate folders.
4. Head to the Android’s SDK folder and proceed to open the tools folder.
5. Two files should have been inside the boot image zip, or 1.b. Copy this into the tools folder. They should be named “boot.img.insecure” and “boot.img”
6. Shutdown the phone.
7. Turn the phone back on while holding the back key. This will boot the fastboot screen, indicated by a white screen and three androids at the bottom.
8. Reconnect the phone via USB if it was disconnected.
9. Start, Run, cmd.exe on Windows. Change the directory to the tools directory that was created earlier.
10. Run fastboot.exe boot boot.img.insecure while in the tools directory.
11. The output should indicate it is downloading and booting.

The device should now begin with root access. In order to access this, open HTC Sync by way of the phone’s alerts menu. Ignore the pop up message in Windows. Open cmd again and type adb.exe shell. The output should be a number sign.

When the pound sign appears, run the following command: mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system , which will mount the phone’s file system in the proper RW mode. Add the su command to the phone and run the following commands in shell, which is the pound sign, and make sure to run all commands separately.

1. cat /system/bin/sh > /system/bin/su
2. chmod 4755 /system/bin/su
3. reboot

This will reboot the phone, loading its stock ROM. Enjoy.

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