Make Your rom Your way

[Steven855]

Have you ever thought that Dell put some unneeded files or programs in that rom image when they shipped that axim to you? Ever wanted to add or remove programs so they will always be there regardless of a hard reset? Ever wanted to do that but thought it's too hard or you don't know how? Here, I show you how easy it is to do this, so even a non-geek can do it.

DISCLAMER: WARNING! If you flash the nb0 (either the one you found or the one you edited), you risk damage to your hardware and data. Anything you do is of your own doing and I am not reponsible for any damage to hardware or data that might occurr with this.


I have finally got a kitchen together so that you can (theoretically) edit any axim rom in existance and create new ones out of it! The links for download for the bottom. You will also need winrar (found at WinRAR download and support. WinRAR is a powerful Windows tool to compress and decompress zip, rar and many other formats: Make Download Promo) to extract the kitchen.

Introducing the Portable Axim Rom Kitchen!!
Note: This only works for the X51(v) roms and the X50(v) WM5 roms.

I have provided how-to instructions inside the kitchen

Instructions for Modifying stuff in OEM
* Be careful when deleting stuff from OEM! You can really screw up your system that way.
* You can modify stuff like pictures and programs that Dell put in there
Step 1: open up the SYS folder inside the build folder
Step 2: delete and/or modify and/or add what you want
Step 3: download BuildDSM off of Xda-developers
Step 4: place it inside the OEM folder
Step 5: drag and drop the folder containing the modified files onto builddsm
Step 6: follow the instructions that builddsm gives you
Step 7: repeat for each folder in OEM that you modify

Instructions for Modifying stuff in SYS
*As far as I know you can only delete packages (the folders directly inside SYS)
*To delete a package, just use (Shift + Del)
*As with OEM, Be careful what you delete in SYS

*As far as modifying XIP, you are on your own (I provide the tools in the kitchen, but you need to find out the process yourself. The process is too much to explain in this one post).

Any questions or comments, just post or pm me in the forum you originally found this post in.


Download (version 1.0): http://www.easy-share.com/1907762004...kitchen_r1.rar




if you really want to donate something, my paypal email is "toa649@myway.com" . You don't have to give anything (although I am on a college student on a budget working on this stuff in my spare time away from my studies), my work is free for everyone's use.

Edit: 1st official release is now out

[FunkyCowie]

My hardware buttons do not work so I can't use nb0 files however is there a way of creating the files that you use through the Dell updating software?

[cravaus]

Looks great. I want to understnd this.

I have followed the directions and get this error after the dump: Error! ProcessFixups: cannot map dump\afd.dll\s003--Is this a bad thing? I see a afd.dll folder in the dump folder. I am not seeing much in the Dump folder that is familiar to me. I see a bunch of .dsm and .rgu files., I do not think it fully extracted.

When I get this working, I would like to delete out Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and Explorer and replace them with my SoftMaker and Opera products. I would also like to delete Dell's Switcher Bar and Home programs and replace them with WisBar Advanced. I also use FlexMail and would like to get rid of the Mail program but I do not think that is possible. I want to stop all dumplication of programs. Any tips here?

If the MS Office Suite must be on the PDA, any thoughts on how to move it to a storage card instead?

[Steven855]

Looks great. I want to understnd this.

I have followed the directions and get this error after the dump: Error! ProcessFixups: cannot map dump\afd.dll\s003--Is this a bad thing? I see a afd.dll folder in the dump folder. I am not seeing much in the Dump folder that is familiar to me. I see a bunch of .dsm and .rgu files., I do not think it fully extracted.

When I get this working, I would like to delete out Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and Explorer and replace them with my SoftMaker and Opera products. I would also like to delete Dell's Switcher Bar and Home programs and replace them with WisBar Advanced. I also use FlexMail and would like to get rid of the Mail program but I do not think that is possible. I want to stop all dumplication of programs. Any tips here?

If the MS Office Suite must be on the PDA, any thoughts on how to move it to a storage card instead?

Where are you getting your nb0 from? What options are you using for "prepare_imgfs.exe" and "viewimgfs.exe"? This "afd.dll" that is giving you errors is a module and when you run "viewimgfs.exe", there is a program that is used by "viewimgfs.exe" to reconstruct the module. I once had this problem when I was starting out with roms too. It might just be that you have a bad nb0 file. As for messing with MS Office mobile, you could move it to a storage card, but you would have to edit the nb0 file and take the MS Office programs and add them to a cab file and then run the cab file and install to storage card. You can't get rid of the mail program without screwing up the whole pim software. Home and Switcher Bar can be deleted with few or no problems. Opera is best installed via cab because of the registry changes and created folders.

[Steven855]

My hardware buttons do not work so I can't use nb0 files however is there a way of creating the files that you use through the Dell updating software?

Do you mean to change around the nb0 file and then somehow turn that into a .img file for the Updater utility? If yes, I have not found a way to do that yet. There is a program to turn the img file into a nb0 file, but not vice-versa.

After I open the dump folder all i see is 2 more folders named .rom and .vm and also a bunch of files that have names containing random numbers and letters ending in .dsm and one ending in .rgu
Where did I go wrong?

[FunkyCowie]

Do you mean to change around the nb0 file and then somehow turn that into a .img file for the Updater utility? If yes, I have not found a way to do that yet. There is a program to turn the img file into a nb0 file, but not vice-versa.

That is what I meant yes. I have searched every where I can think of but to no avail... oh well...

[mirskym]

After I open the dump folder all i see is 2 more folders named .rom and .vm and also a bunch of files that have names containing random numbers and letters ending in .dsm and one ending in .rgu
Where did I go wrong?

Same here. Plus the command window has a few blocks of output starting with Header Type: some hex Address: some Hex

but then a slew of errors listed such as:

Cannot Create ??????????????????????
Unhandled Exception in Dump Image Data

Unknown Header type etc.

I was using Football's WM6 A03 ROM.

Ya i was using the same rom

[mirskym]

Ya i was using the same rom

And I tried the A12 WM5 Dell ROM and got same problem

[Steven855]

That's weird. Did you use the one thread that deals with reviving a bricked X51(v)? If not, you really should. I will look into that a.s.a.p.

[mirskym]

That's weird. Did you use the one thread that deals with reviving a bricked X51(v)? If not, you really should. I will look into that a.s.a.p.

Sorry, I don't follow. Which thread is it and what should I look for in the thread?

[Steven855]

Use this thread http://www.aximsite.com/boards/x50-x...-tutorial.html to make the nb0 for X51 series.

[mirskym]

I already had the .nb0 file. But just in case I took the .IMG file from Dell for the A12, ran it through the app in the thread you mention to convert it to .nb0. Then ran the imgfs apps and still get the same error message on execution and the same gobbledygook in the Dump folder for the most part. (I did get a few folders that seemed to work, one called iexplore.exe that seemed to have the iexplore executable and a few other folders like actsyncc.dll which also had files. But also a whole lot of files with weird name ending in .dsm or .rgu

[Steven855]

Don't worry about the dsm files or the rgu files. Are you using the "-nosplit" option with "prepare_imgfs.exe"? If I have some time today, I will test out Dell's A12 rom. Folders that have names like "actsyncc.dll" are actually modules and you shouldn't mess with those unless you know what you are doing.