This post will walk you through the complicated steps required to root your Amazon Kindle Fire and gain Superuser access - it’s the Android equivalent to Jailbreaking an iOS device.
Steps (Windows only):
1. Tap on quick settings in the upper right corner of the screen and go to More -> Device and then toggle on “Allow Installation of Applications From Unknown Sources”
2. Download and install the Android SDK Manager (before the installation, it will ask you to install Java SE Development Kit (JDK) if you don’t already have it installed – make sure you install it prior to installing the Android SDK Manager)
- NOTE I recommend changing the Android SDK Manager path to C:\Android
3. Run the Android SDK Manager and once it’s finished loading packages, uncheck Android 4.0 and check Android 2.3.3 and then hit “Install 5 packages…”
4. Select “Accept All” ad then hit “Install” – this will take some time. When you get a popup that says “A package that depends on ADB has been updated. Do you wish to restart ADB now” select yes
5. Once it’s complete, scroll down to the bottom of Android SDK manager’s packages list and check off “Google USB Driver package” (it’s inside of extras) and then hit
“Install 1 package…”
6. Navigate to “C:\Android\extras\google\usb_driver”, right click on “android_winusb”, select “open with” and then choose Notepad.
- NOTE the destination of your Android SDK Manager installation might be different, it just depends what you set it at during Step 2
7. Find the lines [Google.NETx86] and [Google.NTamd64], then paste the following text under both of the lines and save it (refer to the video if this step is confusing):
;Kindle Fire
%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_1949&PID_0006
%CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_1949&PID_0006&MI_01
8. In Windows Explorer, type “%USERPROFILE%” in the path bar and then click on the “Organize” drop down menu, go to the view tab, check off “Show hidden files, folders, and drives” and then hit “Apply” and “Ok” (this is so that we can access the required folder in Step 9)
9. In Windows Explorer, type “%USERPROFILE%” in the path bar, open “.android”, right click on “adb_usb”, select “open with” and then choose Notepad.
10. Delete anything that’s inside of the “adb_usb” file and replace it with the following code: 0×1949
11. Plug in your Kindle Fire via USB and then open “Device Manager” – you can simply search for it in the start menu
12. Once inside of “Device Manager”, you’ll see your kindle under “other devices”, right click on the Kindle Fire and select “Update Driver Software”, click “Browse my computer for driver software” select “Browse…”, navigate to C:\Android\extras\google\ and then click “OK”. If you receive a warning about Windows not being able to verify the publisher of the driver software, simply click “Install the driver software anyway”. Once successful, you will receive a confirmation stating that it correctly installed the “Android Composite ADB Interface” and you’ll now see your Kindle Fire under a new section called “Android Phone”
- NOTE the destination of the google folder might be different, it just depends what you set it at during Step 2
13. Open the start menu, type in cmd, open Command Prompt (it should be the only result that comes up) and type the following one line at a time:
cd
\ cd Android
cd platform-tools
adb kill-server
adb devices
If you were successful, you should get something like this after the last command:
List of devices attached
4A76002600000001 device
- NOTE the second line “cd Android” could vary depending on where you installed the Android SDK Manager in step 2
14. Download SuperOneClick v2.2.zip, extract it and run the SuperOneClick application and click “Root” in the upper left and corner of the SuperOneClick application window and just click yes to any and all of the popups
Download Section:
Stay tuned for more awesome Amazon Kindle Fire tutorials including a tutorial on how to get the Android Market and a “normal” Android Interface (as demonstrated in the video).
