OK, since we posted our popular articles about rooting the Nook Color, we have been asked the same question many times – What if something goes wrong and my Nook Color is bricked? How I can unbrick it? How I can restore it to factory state and start again? Is the rooting process reversible? This article will answer these questions and offer some ways to unbrick / restore your Nook Color if something went wrong.
1. Facts:
It is almost impossible to completely brick your Nook Color (of course if you try really hard…) so there is no reason to get scared. If your device doesn’t boot (Black screen at re-boot) it is probably because your boot partition got corrupted during the rooting process. That’s fairly easy to fix and we’ll explain how immediately.
2. Fix
You should know that, specifically to prevent / or help fixing boot partition errors and also to help with the firmware update process, Nook Color is designed to attempt to boot first from the SD card. This is actually the reason dual boot in Froyo / Honeycomb is possible with Nook Color and the method we’ll use to restore the Nook Color in proper shape.
2.1 Activity 1 – Perform a hard-reboot (for mild cases)
Step 1 – Turn your Nook Color OFF
Step 2 – Press the Power and Home (“N”) buttons for 25 seconds until a recovery menu pops-up you to re-set to factory settings
Step 3 – accept all the way until the process is finished
Step 4 – if this doesn’t work, it is power it OFF then ON again and repeat the process
Step 5 – if the steps 1-4 didn’t do the job, it is time for more drastic measures, so jump to Activity 2.
2.2 Activity 2 – Restore your Nook Color to stock firmware (if you tried unsuccessfully to flash a custom ROM onto the Nook Color internal flash memory)
(thanks samuelhalff and thecubed from XDA Developers which deserves the credit for making the files available in the first place / sorting out the issues)
Note: This activity will erase your personal data and after successfully applying it your Nook Color will be in the same state you purchased it.
Step 1: We mentioned Nook Color can dual-boot. We’ll need to build an SD card containing recovery tools, pretty much you are doing when trying to fix your PC hard drive. Download the Clockwork Recovery image from here using the image size similar with your SD card size and restore in on a micro-SD card. For instructions in how to write the image on a SD card, follow How to root Nook Color post, especially Activity 1. Currently available are images for 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB SD cards. You need to know restoring an image to the SD card will erase all the pre-existing information.
Note: If you have a 16GB SD card, just use the 8GB image.
Step 2: Get the original Nook Color software (version 1.0.0 from here, version 1.0.1 from here) and copy it on the root of the SD card you just prepared at Step 1. Root equals outside of any folder.
Step 3: Ensure the Nook is turned off, insert the newly created SD card in it and turn it back on. The Nook Color should boot from the SD card and Clockwork Recovery should start. Navigate to Mounts and Storage->Format System followed by Format Data.
Note: You can perform the back operation in Clockwork Recovery using the power button.
Step 4: Un-mount system and data if they are already mounted. When they are un-mounted, mount system and mount data options should be available.
Step 5: The system should be now ready to accept the stock firmware that you downloaded at step 2. Navigate back to the main menu and select Install zip from SD option. Scroll all the way to the bottom and choose your stock firmware zip file (nook-complete-restore-1.0.0.zip or nook-complete-restore-1.0.1.zip) and let the Clockwork Recovery software write it on the main flash memory. Wait until is done which might take several minutes, depending of your SD card speed. Waiting times of 20 minutes have been reported.
Step 6: Power OFF your Nook Color and remove the SD card. Turn it back ON.
Step 7: Your Nook Color should boot up to its factory state and you can start anew.
Step 8: It would help others if you would post your experience.