Restoring Motorola Xoom to 3.0.1 in Australia

A few days ago I posted about a get of jail free card, restoring your Motorola Xoom from the original disk images, available from http://developer.motorola.com/products/software/. I noted that you should download the bundle that matches your country of residence. Well, I’m in Australia, so naturally I would select (and was selecting) the Australian bundle (Build H.6.1-38-9 for Telstra Australia). I managed to get myself in some un-bootable trouble with my Motorola Xoom in the previous 24 hours up to this post, so I figured I’d follow my own words and restore back to the stock state. Two points to keep in mind.

  1. Some bundles are actually suitable (and will work even work!) on your Motorola Xoom, despite it not being your native country. For example, I just used the ‘Build H.6.1-38-1 for Retail Europe’ bundle to restore my Xoom. Why? Read on.
  2. The Australian Bundle ‘Build H.6.1-38-9 for Telstra Australia’ has to be broken some how. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. What I do know is that the ‘system.img’ file has an issue. I could never boot back into HoneyComb after restoring with this bundle. I’ve confirmed this by completing an entire restore with the ‘Build H.6.1-38-1 for Retail Europe’, and then restoring the system.img from the ‘Build H.6.1-38-9 for Telstra Australia’ bundle, and it won’t boot. To further confirm it, I completed an entire restore with the ‘Build H.6.1-38-9 for Telstra Australia’ bundle. It wouldn’t boot, so I restored just the system.img from the ”Build H.6.1-38-1 for Retail Europe’ bundle, and presto, I was back up and running again, SIM card recognised, the whole lot!

Following my restore with the ‘Build H.6.1-38-1 for Retail Europe’ I also noted the entire device felt much faster, and the Market app doesn’t crash anymore! Needless to say, I’m muchly enjoying my Motorola Xoom far more then I was the day I got it home and tried to add Facebook as my first app. I was not impressed when I realised I couldn’t install any apps, and Market would just keep crashing, which lead me to my hacking, and rooting attempts and finally my requirement to restore.

Had a similar experience? Why not share it in the comments?