Lost root on LG AS855 due to OEM update

Question

I lost root privileges on my LG AS855 when I updated it. I used SuperOneClick to root it. Now, it just hangs on step 7.

This is not a very popular phone and information on rooting it is extremely sparce on the internet. Any suggestions on how to go about getting root privileges back would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

The OEM update will have caused by you are to lose root due to the fact that stock ROM's aren't rooted.

This update will have most likely blocked the use of simple rootkit exploits, which is how all of the one click root solutions work.

It your OEM upgrade was to ICS, then Google blocked rootkits in version 4.0 onwards. If it was not an upgrade to ICS or later, then OEM has patched the OS for all of the common exploits.

If this is the case, then the only way to root you device would be to do we fastboot to flash a rooted boot.img file, or the old firmware so you can use a one click here root solution again.

It is generally recommended that once you have rooted, you don't use OEM updates for this reason.

Answer 2

As Liam pointed out, OTA updates tend to "remove" root access -- and most likely they also patch the places used by known root exploits to prevent future rooting.

One thing he recommended was flashing back the old firmware, and root it the way you did -- which is a common way to obtain root. From there on you have basically two choices to update and still keep root: Flash a custom ROM, or (if you want to go with stock) take a look at OTA RootKeeper:

Free tool trying to protect root across manufacturer's OTA updates. Also serves as temporary un-root (see statement)

(For more details, see the app's description in the playstore).