Rescue your Nook Glowlight Plus flash it with alternative firmware

How to bypass registration or out of the box experience OOBE and install TWRP and alternative firmware for the Nook Glowlight Plus 7.8 BNRV700

Step 1: How to Bypass registration or OOBE

As you may know it is not possible to register or login from the Nook Glowlight Plus 2019 after the updates from Barnes & Noble. So the problem is that after the "uh-oh. Sorry we are having trouble setting up your NOOK" your reader becomes useless, because you cannot continue from there and do anything with it unless you register to the B&N servers. 

I do not like forced obsolescence which obligates you to buy a new device or compromise your privacy, so I wanted to use this reader as always by copying ebook files into the internal storage memory of the Nook and read favourite books. I bought the Nook new and it is perfect condition with a fantastic e-ink screen. So how to bypass the OOBE (out of the box experience) blocking screen?

How to bypass the registration screen in the Nook Glowlight

• At the "Discover Today, Read Forever" (welcome) screen, touch the top two corners, top-left and top-right of the screen at the same time. I did it about ten times.
• Repeat this until you enter the "EasterEggActivity".

Skip registration diagnosis screen

Step 2: Set USB debugging and enter adb mode

USB debugging is necessary to enable the computer to recognize the Nook for adb and fastboot commands.

From the EasterEggActivity screen:

• Choose "Diagnostic"
• Choose "Android Development Setings" and enable "USB Debugging"

Now you can see the Nook in ADB, but it will be unauthorized so you need to reboot to the main screen and se the alternate top-left/top-right touch to enter EasterEgg again.

Enter Diagnosis again and click:

"Disable mass storage" and "Allow debugging"

ADB is now authorized. Verify with:

adb devices

you should see:

[your number] device

USB debug

Step 3: Install TWRP recovery twrp_quill

TWRP is necessary for recovery and to install the firmware, so download the file twrp_quill.img from: https://github.com/Ryogo-Z/nook_ntx_6sl_twrp/releases

Enter FASTBOOT mode

To install TWRP the device should be in fastboot mode, from adb mode type:

adb reboot fastboot

Verify that the Nook is in fastboot mode with:

fastboot devices

You should see the device in the computer screen.

Flash the TWRP recovery image:

Type:

fastboot flash recovery twrp_generic.img

you should see something like:

Warning: skip copying recovery image avb footer (recovery partition size: 0, recovery image size: 8067072). Sending 'recovery' (7878 KB) OKAY [ 0.320s] Writing 'recovery' OKAY [ 0.538s] Finished. Total time: 0.895s

Boot from TWRP to enter recovery mode

Type:

fastboot boot twrp_generic.img

Or interrupt startup 5 times to enter TWRP recovery mode.

TWPR recovery welcome

Step 4: Install Alternative Firmware

First read about this alternative firmware, it is very light and it does not have blocking registration screen or out of the box experience (oobe) which makes the device useless. All the useless features have been removed.

https://xdaforums.com/t/gp-g3-gp7-8-twrp-alternative-firmware.4074347/

Make sure to download the version 1.04.414 for the Nook Glowlight 7.8 reader: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mvCv3GR0KR56-NTuubIuGcuxS8Ymc9t-

Through the file browser of your computer you can see the Nook eBook device. Copy the alternative update1.04.414.zip file into the internal storage of the Nook on the root folder.

Nook firmware is copied in internal storage

From TWRP Recovery do:

"Mount" > Unmount system by unchecking

Go back and click on "Install"

Successful firmware install

After successful installing, clean up and reset to factory defaults;

• "Wipe" > Swipe to Factory Reset
• "Advanced Wipe" > clear dalvik-cache;

If you forget anything reboot on recovery from adb and do it again with:

adb reboot recovery

And you will be in TWRP recovery mode.

Step 5: Install apps

Remember the device is in Android 4, to install apps like KOreader, read my article here: Install apps on Nook Glowlight 7.8 with adb

Conclusion

I am really happy with this alternative firmware because there is no registration screen and I can use the Nook again. And it is also very light, which makes the Nook Glowlight Plus 7.8 much more faster. Thanks to the work of XDA forums we can reuse wonderful devices like this. They slimmed the firmware by removing all unnecessary things and the reader works now really well. After installing KOreader it is again my every day reading device. 

And last but not least I did everything on my old Lenovo x200 Laptop with Linux Xubuntu installed on it, everything worked like a charm.