Have a Nividia Shield Plus that you want to get a little more out of? This guide will teach you exactly how you can root your device! In no time at all you’ll have root access on your Nividia Shield, which will open the door to endless possibilities.

Disclaimer: This guide is intended as a helpful “how to”. dotTech and its writers are not responsible for any gain or loss (including but not limited to bricked devices) incurred as a result of following this guide. Root your device at your own risk. Rooting may void your warranty. Proceed at your own risk.

Requirements

This root guide is for the Nividia Shield running Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean. is specifically for the Nividia Shield.

Take note this will wipe all your files and data on your phone. Proceed at your own risk.

Before We Begin

Download the Nividia Shield drivers and install them onto your PC (if you haven’t done so already). The Nividia Shield USB drivers can be found at this link. Extract it to a folder called Universal_Naked_Driver_0.73 on your Desktop. Before installing the Nvidia Shield USB drivers, uninstall any other Android device drivers from your PC.

If you are a Windows 8 user, you will need to disable Windows driver enforcement before attempting to install the driver. To disable driver enforcement, follow this guide here.

Install the Nvidia Shield USB drivers by going to Device Manager in Windows, finding the device entry that says ‘Unknown device‘ and right clicking on it. Once you’ve found the ‘Unknown device‘ entry, right click on it and select ‘Update driver software‘.

After clicking on ‘Update driver software,’ a window will come up and ask you how you want to search for the driver. Select ‘Browse my Computer for driver software,’ and then point it towards the Universal_Naked_Driver_0.73 folder on your Desktop. Windows will then find android_winusb.inf and install it as a driver.

Your Nividia Shield needs to be in USB debugging mode. Go to Settings, then Developer options, and then check the box that says USB debugging.

To enable Developer options, go to Settings, then About phone and tap the build number seven times till you get the “You are now a developer” message.

Have your micro USB cable handy.

Download the Android adb package, and extract it to a folder called adb onto the Desktop of your PC. The Android adb package can be found by following this link.

Download superuser-su.zip to your Desktop and extract them. The superuser-su.zip archive will contain two files. Superuser.apk and the su binary. Place these files inside the adb folder and placve it inside the adb folder on your Desktop.

Download thor-insecure-patched-boot.img and place it inside the adb folder on your Desktop.

How To Root Nividia Shield

Part One: Unlocking The Bootloader

• Navigate to the adb folder on your Desktop. Hold down the shift button on your keyboard, and right click at the same time. After doing this the Windows context menu will appear. Click ‘open command window here’. A command prompt window will appear.
• Connect your Nvidia Shield to your PC with it’s micro USB cable.
• Reboot your Nvidia Shield into bootloader mode by entering the command below into the command prompt window.

adb reboot bootloader

• After entering bootloader mode, the devices need to be put into fastboot. This will verify that your device is connected properly.

fastboot devices

• Finally, to unlock the bootloader, enter the command below.

fastboot oem unlock

• Once you’ve entered the command to unlock the bootloader, your device will prompt you if you wish to unlock it. Select the unlock option.
• Reboot your Shield and proceed onto part two.

Part Two: Rooting The Nvidia Shield

• Reboot your device into bootloader mode. Do this by entering the command below into the command prompt window.

adb reboot bootloader

• After entering bootloader mode, the devices need to be put into fastboot. This will verify that your device is connected properly.

fastboot devices

• Now we need to flash an insecure boot image to the Shield so it can be rooted.

fastboot boot thor-insecure-patched-boot.img

• After flashing the boot image, we need to set the /system partitions in read/write mode so that we can modify it.

adb shell
mount -o rw,remount -t ext4 /dev/block/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/by-name/APP /system
exit

• Now we need to push the root files directly to the /system partition of the Shield. This can be done by entering all the commands below into the command prompt window.

adb push su /system/xbin
adb push Superuser.apk /system/app
adb shell
chmod 6755 /system/xbin/su
chmod 644 /system/app/Superuser.apk
mount -o ro,remount -t ext4 /dev/block/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/by-name/APP /system
sync
reboot

• Once the commands above are entered, Superuser.apk and the Su binary will be pushed onto your Shield, effectively rooting it. Once your Nvidia Shield has rebooted, you will have root access!

Done!

Conclusion

Enjoy a rooted Nividia Shield.

[via xda-developers]