I wanted to root my NOOKcolor the other night, but was stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the instructions requiring a MicroSD card reader. Well Mister Fancy-pants, some of us don’t have a MicroSD card reader, but we do have all the other necessary pieces to the puzzle. I scoured the Android Tablets forum for a solution and ended up posting the question. To my surprise the solution was pretty simple — use your cell phone.

I’m going to walk you through my experience of rooting my NOOKcolor using the instructions from nookDevs. I’m assuming that you’re using a Windows machine and that you’re a little familiar with the Android interface already.

Items Needed

  1. Of course the first item is a Barnes & Nobles NOOKcolor (NC).
  2. A MicroSD card with at least 128 MB of space on it.
  3. A computer. I used a Windows machine in this instance.
  4. A mobile phone with a MicroSD slot.
  5. A Gmail/YouTube linked account.
  6. The program Image Writer for Windows (win32diskimager).
  7. Auto Nooter [for NC v1.0.0] [for NC v1.0.1]

The Rooting Process

Preparing the MicroSD Card

  1. Turn off your cell phone and insert the new MicroSD card.
  2. Turn on your cell phone and plug it into your computer.
  3. Make sure it mounts and has a letter drive associated to it. (example: G:\)
  4. Unzip the Auto Nooter file.
  5. Open Image Writer for Windows program and locate the Auto Nooter file.
    1. Choose the correct drive letter (under Device) and click the “Write” button. A small warning: it will overwrite the entire MicroSD card.

Once it finishes writing to the MicroSD card, you can close the program and Eject your cell phone from the computer. That’s it, your card is ready to be used.

Run Auto Nooter on Your NOOKcolor

  1. Turn your NOOKcolor completely off and make sure it’s NOT plugged into your computer.
  2. Insert the newly written MicroSD card into your NOOKcolor.
  3. Plug the NOOKcolor into your computer.
    1. The NOOKcolor will automatically boot even though the screen is off. Wait about a minute or so.
  4. Once the process is complete the NOOKcolor will reboot itself and you’ll see a new boot animation.

At that point you can safely remove the MicroSD card or format it using NOOK’s settings. That’s it — your NOOKcolor is now rooted!

The Aftermath

Rooting was the easy part of this adventure, what happened afterward was a bit jarring at first. I worked my way through it and emerged with an understanding of just how flexible Android is. After your NC is rooted you’ll get a very familiar “Start” screen. The same type of screen when you first start playing with your Android phone. It’s a wizard that connects your Google account to your device. This one is called LogicPD Zoom2. For some odd reason I was unable to register my Gmail account — it was an endless loop of reentering my username and password.

At first my physical home button (NOOK button) wouldn’t send me to the home screen. I rebooted the device to see if there was something stuck in memory preventing me from moving on. That wasn’t it. Eventually I found my way back to the home screen. At this point, due to my lack of understanding, I was expecting the same experience as I do on my Motorola Droid. A combination of the physical home button and the SoftKeys button is essential for you getting around the apps, menus, etc. Take some time and get used to dealing with it.

Overall; it’s still the same NOOK layer, but you have the ability to use Android Market apps. I ended up installing a launcher that I was familiar with, ADW.Launcher. I have the typical set of apps running — Amazon Kindle, Angry Birds, Dropbox, Facebook, Gmail, TweetDeck, etc. I did experience some quirks:

  • Gmail gave me an error that sync needs to be enable in order to access email. I fiddled around with it, but I wasn’t able to get into the typical Settings > Accounts & sync to enable it. Once I got into the inbox I did a refresh and that got things going.
  • Calendar didn’t pull up any of my events or calendars.
  • YouTube worked for a short while, but now it crashes when I open it. @pbnjoely advised me to simply uninstall/re-install the signed YouTube.apk file.
  • Downloading files from the Internet is an odd occurrence. The download process goes through just fine, but I have NO IDEA where those files went. For instance I wanted a new wallpaper so i downloaded one Nook Color Wallpapers. The Maker only knows where that file is stored? I used ASTRO to look for it, but was unsuccessful.

What’s Next

The next thing that I’m going to work on is getting it tethered to my Droid. I’ll probably also look for a custom ROM to install on my NC. Who knows!? At this point the world is my oyster and I’m craving for a bit of digital adventure! If you’ve rooted your NOOKcolor let me know how the process went for you?

Related Posts:

  1. First Impression of the NOOKcolor