How To Root Nook Color & Install Android Market with Auto-Nooter

Auto-Nooter is a tool for rooting your Barnes & Noble Nook Color using an SD card. The method has been tried and tested by several to work flawlessly so if you want to root your Nook Color to get Android Market access on it and install apps that the official Android firmware doesn’t allow, read on.

Auto-Nooter was developed by XDA-Developers forum member GabrialDestruir to enable anyone to root their Nook Color and enable Market as well as other Google Apps access on it. The result is an Android tablet that can run any Android apps without the default restrictions. These are the goodies you can expect after you use the tool:

• Full root access with su and Superuser
• Softkeys 3.0.0
• Busybox
• NookColor Tools for enabling non-market apps
• Calendar
• Calculator
• Android Market
• Gmail
• YouTube
• Gingerbread keyboard
• Support for multi-touch apps
• Live wallpapers
• Auto-installation of apps.

Had enough reading? Want to get on with it? Here is the complete guide.

Disclaimer: Please follow this guide at your own risk. AddictiveTips will not be liable if your device gets damaged or bricked during the process.

Requirements:

• Nook Color running firmware version 1.0.1. This method will NOT work on firmware version 1.0.0. Also, you must do a COMPLETE wipe before updating to 1.0.1 for this method to work. See Step 1.
• Nook Color must be already registered.
• A Gmail account that’s linked to YouTube as well. In case you used a Google account to register your Nook Color with Barnes & Noble, you should use that one.
• A microSD card reader. The USB kind or the ones that come built-in with some computers should do but mounting the SD Card with Nook Color or any other phone/tablet/eReader will NOT work.
• A tool to write a data image to your SD card:
  • Windows: We will be using free tool ImageWriter. Just download it and extract the contents of the zip file on your computer, or use any other disk image writing tool of your choice.
  • Linux: Command line tool dd comes built-in with most Linux distributions and we will be using that. Install it if yours doesn’t have it.

Method:

1. If your Nook Color is running firmware version 1.0.0 and you haven’t updated it to 1.0.1 yet, first follow the “Method one: Eight interrupted Boots” part of this method to wipe your device and then update to firmware version 1.0.1.
2. Download Auto-Nooter to your computer and unzip it to extract the disc image file that it contains.
3. Connect your SD card to your computer using the card reader.
4. This step depends on your operating system.
   • Windows: Launch ImageWriter on your computer, browse to select the image file extracted in Step 2, select your SD card drive under ‘Device’ and click ‘Write’. Wait till the process finishes.
   • Linux:Launch a terminal window and enter this command:

     dd if=auto-nooter-2-12-25.img of=/dev/sdcard

     Replace /dev/sdcard with the appropriate path of your mounted SD card and specify the appropriate path of the data image file if necessary.

5. Once the image has been written to your SD card, safely remove/unmount it and take it out.
6. Make sure your Nook Color is not connected to your computer and insert the SD card into it.
7. Now connect your Nook Color to your computer via USB. This should power the device on.
8. Wait till Auto-Nooter automatically runs on your Nook Color to root it. The device will automatically reboot when this is done.
9. Upon reboot, unlock your screen and you will be presented with the Android Welcome screen.
10. Skip signing-in for now and enable Location Services when asked by the on-screen wizard.
11. Connect to a Wi-Fi network.
12. Go to ‘Extras’ and launch YouTube.
13. Tap ‘Menu’, select ‘My Channel’ and sign-in using your Gmail account.
14. Now exit YouTube, go back to ‘Extras’ and launch Gmail.
15. Choose to sync your Gmail account and exit when done. Don’t worry if the sync fails for now.
16. Launch the Android Market and when prompted, choose to accept the Terms and Services.

And that should do it – you should now have a rooted Nook Color with Market as well as the above-mentioned apps installed and you should be able to use it as an Android tablet now rather than just an eBook Reader. You can enable the installation of non-market apps by running the ‘NookColor Tools’ app.

Note: If YouTube fails to launch, uninstall it from /data/app and reinstall it again.

If you want to be able to use this SD card for normal storage now, go to Settings > Device Info > SDCard > UnMount > Format.

While this method has worked for most, if it doesn’t work for you or you need to contact the developer for any reason, use the XDA-Developers forum link given below.

[via XDA-Developers]

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Haroon Q Raja

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