How to Set Up ADB and Fastboot with Android SDK on Windows 7 & Windows 8

Last modified: April 10th, 2014
Posted in: Tips

Android SDK brings with itself the two most important tools needed for tweaking your Android phone, ADB (Android Debug Bridge) and Fastboot. Why do we need them? ADB and fastboot helps us install a custom recovery, which allows us to root our Android devices, install custom ROMs and perform many other system tweaks which are not otherwise possible.

We do so many tutorials daily on TeamAndroid.com about how to root devices, install custom firmware etc. and we always recommend you should have your USB driversproperly installed and your Android phone should be working perfectly fine with ADB and Fastboot.

Let’s get on with the tutorial on how to set up ADB and Fastboot for your Android phone so that you never have to go through USB drivers issues again when trying out a custom firmware.

UPDATE: You can also try Android Wear on your computer. How? Tutorial: How to Install Android Wear SDK and Try Android Wear on Computer.

How to Set Up ADB and Fastboot with Android SDK

Here are the step-by-step instructions to set up ADB / Fastboot on your computer. Follow the steps carefully and make  sure you read the tutorial once before actually performing it.

Required:

• An Android phone. We will be using a Galaxy Nexus.
• microUSB cable
• A computer

Jump To Pages:

If you already have downloaded and install Android SDK, you can jump to the following pages to set up ADB or Fastboot. Or just follow all the steps as given below.

• Page 2: How to Install and Set Up ADB Drivers.
• Page 3: How to Install and Set Up Bootloader / Fastboot Drivers.

I – DOWNLOADING JAVA & ANDROID USB DRIVERS

First, we need to get Java Platform installed and then download the Android USB drivers (and some other tools) using Android SDK Manager. This is how it is to be done:

Step 1 – Download and Install Java Platform (JDK) from Java SE Software Development Kit (SDK) downloads. Once installed, proceed to the next step.

Step 2 – Download Android SDK (installer_rXX.X-windows.exe) from the Android Developers website. Preferably: Click on Other platforms and download the ZIP package file for Windows.

Step 3 – Extract the zip file anywhere in your computer. We extracted in D:\ drive. So now we have, D:\android-sdk-windows.

Step 4 – Open SDK Manager and wait till it loads (fetches) all the packages.

Step 5 – Now only select two pakcages. Check Android SDK Platform-tools and Google USB Driveroptions. Uncheck everything else as shown below. Then click on the “Install 2 packages…” button.

Step 6 – Confirm the packages that you selected. Select Accept All and click the “Install” button.

Step 7 – Wait till the downloading finishes.

Step 8 – Once you get the following screen, this means all the packages have been successfully installed.

Step 9 – If you again go to the Android SDK folder (D:\android-sdk-windows), you will see the following directories now. extras and platform-tools are the most important ones that we need.

Ref:http://www.teamandroid.com/2012/07/30/how-to-set-up-adb-fastboot-with-android-sdk/