In reference to my previously-purchased Viewsonic G Tablet from Woot, I now want to share the how-to’s of “rooting” my tablet. It took a bit of doing, but not because it’s hard to root. What took a bit of doing was getting it to be the way I wanted. Yeah there were a few technical issues, but nothing to be scared of necessarily. It’s true rooting is not for the casual user or the faint of heart. But having rooted my unit I can say that it was worth every minute it took to get it as cool as I have pimped it out now! 😉 DISCLAIMER: YOU WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY IF YOU ROOT YOUR UNIT AND INSTALL CLOCKWORKMOD RECOVERY. And like other sites also state, YOU DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK. NOT ALL UNITS BEHAVE THE SAME WAY AND YOU MAY NOT EXPERIENCE THE SAME RESULTS AS MY ROOTING EXPERIENCE. IF THIS HAPPENS PLEASE GO ONLINE TO ANY OF THE GREAT RESOURCE OPTIONS OUT THERE (CyanogenMod or XDA forums) FOR ASSISTANCE!
To root your G Tablet you will need to have a couple of files on hand. I will walk you through the method that I think is best and most straight-forward. Realize though that everyone who has rooted or flashed multipe ROM’s on their tablet might have a slightly different method. That’s ok. There is no one right way to do this, and everyone’s tablet may not behave the same way at each step in the process. It’s all a bit of trial and error, mostly trial and sometimes a good deal of error. But the one thing I have read is VERY true: it’s almost impossible to brick your G Tablet. The root may not take and you may get error messages and all sorts of stuff up the yin yang. But you can still get back to its’ original state with almost no effort. So with that let’s proceed.
To establish ROOT on the unit I used Z4Root. You can easily find the apk for the app online. Install it as you would any app on your un-rooted tablet by either downloading it via the browser, connecting your tablet to the computer, or via a USB flash drive. Follow the directions for permant root and you are good to go.
The next step is to install ClockworkMod Recovery 8. Look for this zip online: ClockworkMod_Gtab_v08.zip. I might post it to my website at some point but for now you can find it via google search easily. Download and unzip the update.zip and recovery folder to a location on your computer. Then copy them to a microsd card for use on the tablet. Put the microsd into the tablet and power on the unit. Just for redundancy sake and to make sure the install happens the first time, copy the update.zip and recovery folder to the root of the internal memory. Power down the unit. Then to initiate root access, press the Volume + and Power buttons together. You will see a message along the lines of Recovery Key Detected. That is a good sign. You can let go of the buttons at that time. Eventually you will get a menu option of 4 items (I have been in and out of root so many times with recoveries, forgive me if I get the wording or number of options incorrect). Use the top Volume button to go through the menu selections. Select Install update.zip. To select that option press the Home icon on the tablet’s right side. You will then see the unit go through an install process with a box and an animated arrow. After that is done, you should have an option for rebooting the unit. Go ahead and reboot.
Note: Sometimes in my first rooting I didn’t get that option and the unit would just hang. To do a force reboot press the power button and hold it down until you see the unit reboot. It should power up normally with the Viewsonic birds and the G Tablet logo.
So far so good. 🙂