Rooting for dummies

I'm not rooting my Hero until someone comes up with a one-step or one-click method. Benefits sound wonderful, but the risks for a non-techie are too great. Even the most "basic" discussion boards use language that's Greek to me. I'm a photographer, not a programmer!

BOO5TED
At the risk of sounding really stupid, I don't know what you mean when you say Step 2) Run, read disclaimer, press button. I downloaded the file to my PC's hard drive. But I can't run it from there, it's an .apk file. I must have to transfer it to my Hero first, right? But how, and where to? The SD card?

Then in Step 4) Use the recovery to flash rootme.zip that is now on your SDCard, or the custom rom of your choice... using the recovery to flash rootme.zip might sound perfectly logical to you, but to me it's Greek.

See, I told you, I'm not hip about this stuff, and too many seemingly simple steps to advanced users, do in fact skip over a bunch of important details someone like me needs to figure this out.

Sorry.

Hey there senior.

If you're still on the lookout for a one click root, on your phone, navigate to

http://unrevoked.com/m/

and follow the very basic instructions. It does all the work for you.

It will download an "apk" file, and you should see the file downloading in your status icon.

Make sure you navigate on your phone, from the home screen, go to Menu -> Settings -> Applications and check the box that says "unknown sources" so the application you just downloaded will be allowed to install.

Run the program, it will be very basic.

Once it says it is done, test that you have root by downloading a program called Android Terminal Emulater, run it and you'll see a blue screen with this

type in


and press enter.

then you should see a popup that says "this application is trying to access root"

you should click allow, and make sure the "remember" option is checked.

if it goes from

to


then you have successfully found root.

If this doesn't work, then let me know.  

If it does, let me know as well, because I can help you in the next steps. (getting the wifi tether app, taking screen shots if you want to, installing custom roms, etc.)