Rooting Android phones / Custom ROMs

My formerly trusty Samsung Galaxy S (the first one), (known as a GT i9000 in some circles) was beginning to behave a bit erratically, so I decided to see if I could spruce it up a bit; if I fail and it dies, I have a crappy old phone I can use, so I thought it would be worth a go to see if a re-install or better still a more recent version of Android would help.
I have so far backed up all contacts, etc onto the external 8GB memory card, updated the USB drivers and carefully chosen a .tar file for the appropriate version of Android. Having unzipped and saved this file, I've followed the procedure to restart my phone in download mode and used Odin to install the new file via a USB cable to my laptop.

All has gone well and I have the new "Super User" app and almost everything seems fine...

Apart from this: I cannot connect to Wifi; I select "Turn on wifi", the box gets ticked, it scans for networks, then after 10 seconds or so, reverts to wifi not selected. I can't get it to join using the WPS button either. This is apparently not unknown as an issue, but I'm not too sure how to resolve it. Was I flashing it with the wrong image?

If I now install a later version of Android, will it potentialy sort out the problem, or do I need to get it working before "upgrading"?

Thanks for advice as ever.

Also, if we can get the Jim technophobe gags out of the way early on, that would be helpful...

Has it got dolby Jim?

Normally I would be one of the first to suggest a bag on yer 'ead and an application of slimline salad dressing, but in the last couple of minutes I've just outclennelled you and totalled mine.

Poetic justice.

Rats.

It was all going well until I istalled the woofers and tweeters. Sorry to hear about your paperweight, Emjay. I'll take a look at it if you like...?

Have you used a rooting tool to do the job or did you do it manually using various adb commands?

One thing you will want to get is clockworkmod recovery - which enables you to flash android images whenever you want. Essential if you flash a duff image which you might have. Get it by installing ROM Manager from the Play Store. You can flash Cmod using the manager, copy images to the sdcard, reboot into recovery, then flash and it's all done.

Just a tip - always make sure you check the checksums of downloaded images match up and always clear cache and data when flashing an image in clockwork mod.

Good luck

Thanks Rhodri. I used Odin to do the rooting (if that sounds like an appropriate answer to your question). The rooting tool installed CWM recovery automatically, so I have that available.
For the rest, I sort of understand what you mean until you used the term "checksum" at which my brain gave up. How would I clear the cache? Where would I find it, or would I use a utility of some sort?

Ah I got you. That all in one tool seems to have worked nicely. You should find that you can reboot into CWM by holding down power and volume down buttons. To be safe, I'd install Rom Manager first and flash the latest version of CMW through that. You can reboot into CWM from that app too. Bit easier.

As for clearing cache.. that's all done within CWM. So get to that first and in the menu options before selecting the ROM you are going to flash choose to clear cache. I'd recommend the factory reset & clear cache option in CWM to avoid any issues after.

Oh and checksum is quite easy to get. Most the downloads will tell you what the checksum is - so once you've downloaded the ROM, make sure the checksum is still the same or you might have a corrupt image. There are a few ways to find out checksums depending on what OS you use, prob best to google that part.

Be careful not to brick it. Feel free to PM me if you get in trouble!

Thanks again Rhodri. My main concern is that as the wifi is no longer working, will installing a new version of Android cure that or do I need to fix it (how!?) beforehand?

No probs. I have had a number of ROMs that have been defective slightly - wifi not working, sound issues. Especially on my kindle fire HD. I haven't got any advice on repairing it sorry. I would just re-flash.

Worth looking at Cyanogen ROMs. Very nice looking and the stable version (not nightly developer ones) are really good.

Might be a nice new android kitkat ROM ready for your phone now. Worth a look, and saves waiting years for samsung to push it out the update to our phones!

Not an expert on 'droid but I'm going to punt on a mismatch between your kernel and WiFi module. You might be able to pinpoint this from the system logs (dmesg) and see what's happening when it tries to start WiFi.

http://bootloader.wikidot.com/linux:android:kmsg

Failing that you may want just to start again from scratch; second thumbs up on cyanogen mod

Cheers,
Mark

Thanks Mark. I think I'll try to unroot and start again. Not sure how successful that will be, but I'll give it a go.

I've briefly dabbled in a tiny bit of Linux, but not sure I'm up to your system logs suggestion!

Good luck either way! Getting WiFi on any Linux distro is.... challenging.

If you can pull the logs with adb (> adb shell dmesg) then feel free to send them over and I'll have a look (no promises I'll be able to decipher them though)

My feelings of techno-inadequacy return...!

I may be crap... but I'm bloody slow.

After a lot of faffing (inevitably) I've managed to install a very swishy slim bean ROM version of Android 4.3

I've got wifi back and it's all great. BUT.

BUT, it now doesn't recognise my network and I can't manually install one, either. So I now have a small wifi tablet, not a phone.

Back to the drawing board... I'm hoping that either I can install a more recent stable release of slim bean or possibly CyanogenMod...

Any ideas?!

Wish for a time when things were simpler.

All you needed was 10p and remembering where the nearest phone box was. Need to look something up? Go to the library or let your fingers do the walking...use Yellow Pages. You can still do those things of course, although phone boxes are getting hard to find these days

10p? T'youngsters of today... I used to get sent out with 4d; push button A to connect or button B to return coins.

Right, well, I've changed to the Cyanogenmod v10 and it seems to work fine. It's a massive step forward from the old OS and so far seems pretty stable. I feel happy that I could do it again if the need arises.

Feeling rather pleased with myself!

Haha. Nice!

Thanks for the help, guys - I wasn't at all confident, but I think I sort of see how it works. I had to re-install a different Gapps package after I first installed the Cyanogenmod ROM, as the keyboard disappeared, but it now seems pretty good. Like a new phone for free in fact! Result!

I'm sure there's an iOS/Android (and possibly even PC/Mac) argument to be had here..... Of course I'd never start such a thing...