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How To Root Motorola Xoom

Xoom – Motorola’s flagship tablet running Google’s Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system – has been rooted! Just a day back, we covered how to unlock the bootloader for Motorola Xoom and now we bring you the eagerly awaited rooting of this powerhouse of a tablet, thanks to Koush who brought us the invaluable ClockworkMod Recovery and ROM Manager. Let’s rub our hands together in excitement and get on with rooting this device!

Update:  This root guide is now depreciated and unadvised. You should check out the far more easier one click root tool available for rooting the Motorola Xoom on Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

If you’re not familiar with what rooting is, see our top 10 reasons to root your Android device.

Disclaimer: Please follow this guide at your own risk. AddictiveTips will not be liable if your device gets damaged or bricked during the process. Motorola-XOOM-root
All the contents of your phone will get wiped in the process so make sure to backup first.

Requirements:

Instructions:

  1. Connect your Xoom to Wi-Fi or data network but do NOT setup any Google account yet.
  2. Enable USB Debugging from Settings > Applications > Development.
  3. Open up a Command Prompt window and navigate to the folder where you extracted the root files.
  4. Enter the following command. It will reboot your phone into its bootloader. 
    adb reboot bootloader
  5. Flash the new boot image (included in the rooting files) using this command: 
    fastboot flash boot rootboot.img
  6. Now reboot your device using: 
    fastboot reboot
  7. Once the device has rebooted, enter the following commands: 
    adb remount
adb push su /system/bin
adb shell chmod 4755 /system/bin/su
adb push Superuser.apk /system/app
  8. Verify root: 
    adb shell

    Now you should see a # prompt signifying that you now have root access.

Congratulations! You now have a rooted Motorola Xoom and are ready to unleash the device’s true potential. You can install all those apps that require root access straight away but if you want to flash custom ROMs, you’ll have to wait. While Koush has made a working ClockworkMod Recovery for the device, he will be releasing it once the nonfunctional SD card slot issue of the device is fixed as the recovery will not be of any practical use without it.

[via AndroidCentral]
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Zayed Rehman

Studying Development Sciences in the humble pursuit of saving this world; making occasional contributions to the world of Android. | Find me on Google+

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18 Comments

  2. Yup, this bricked my device too. Wish I’d read the comments BEFORE trying to root. Trying to unbrick now, will post my findings

  3. During my procedure I’ve noticed that step 7 is executed without the Xoom being in fastboot mode. Otherwise one of the USB drivers unloads itself. 

  4. I got it un-bricked.  So for what I understand, the Xoom is very difficult to brick permanently which is great, IMHO because it means there is hope if you can find a sharp guy to help you. 😉  Here is an un-bricking procedure that should put you in the right place for rooting.

    1. Get the right ROM for your Xoom.  Be sure it’s the right one.  The wrong one and you are back to brick city.  ROMs can be found at Motodev. You will need a Motodev account: 
    http://developer.motorola.com/products/software/  Keep a window open on this site as we will be using the list of fastboot commands in the upper right as soon as we complete step 2. 

    2. As is mentioned in the above guide you will need to have the SDK stuff installed properly so that you have access to the fastboot command, etc. etc. 

    3. Follow the procedures for flashing in the ROM in the upper right of the MotoDev site EXCEPT the “fastboot oem lock” command because we want ours unlocked for rooting. 

    4. Execute “fastboot reboot” and when it restarts navigate through the menus on the Xoom but don’t set up Verizon or Wifi and skip over Google config also. 

    5. Turn on USB debugging as mentioned above. 

    OK, now you are ready to try rooting again. When I did this, I found myself downgraded from 3.2 something to 3.0 which is exactly the version this HOWTO is written for. My supposition is that the recovery system will later be used to upgrade to later versions like ICS or 3.2.x.  This is probably correct. 

    BTW, I’m Jim Collings. 
    I’m a Software Developer but not an Android Software developer. Not yet anyway… 😉

  5. I think I’ve found one or more ways to un-brick my Xoom.  What I expect happened is that I simply used the old image provided so what I should need to unbrick is the image my OS was using when I installed the wrong one. So…  install correct stock image and it should work again. Mmmmm… On second thought, maybe I can go straight to ICS which is what my goal was anyway.

  6. It needs to be made much clearer which OS version this guide is for and what might happen if you use the wrong version.  These guys below are new to the process and are following step by step. If you don’t put in a step that says “check the version”, they are not going to because they don’t know any better. 

    Please fix. 

  11. HELP, unlocked mt bootroom, i followed these steps and got to step 5, and my xoom bricked!!! im stuck at the M logo! i have tried the hard reset and format from here

    http://www.freerepairguide.com/how-to-hard-reset-motorola-xoom.html

    but it wont boot pls help

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