So you want to install one of those .vkp patches to add more functionality to your Sony Ericsson phone? Well I’ve been thinking about writing an easy guide to patch your phones without any trouble.

After you’ve followed this tutorial, you’ll be able to add more such patches to add other extra features to your phone. If you don’t know about .vkp patches, let me tell you what .vkp patches can do. Patches actually let your phone do alot of things than it isn’t allowed to do therwise. For example .vkp patches can:

1. Remove java restrictions so that you won’t be annoyed by those permission messages everytime opera mini tries to access the internet or every time you start a file reading program
2. Add extra menus on the phone’s desktop for easy accessiblitity
3. Increase sms (inbox) storage size to thousands of sms msgs.
4. Add a blacklist (call-blocking) feature so that certain people can’t call you.
5. Add other smaller features like make your phone vibrate once when you call someone and they attend the call.

Installing the .vkp patches:

We’ll be using a program called Far Manager to apply the patches to your sony ericsson phone. Get Far Manager from here, now we’ll be using the SEFP plugin (Sony Ericsson Flash Plugin), you can download it from here. Now install Far Manger and  and don’t run it yet. Extract the SEFP  plugin file you just downloaded. You’ll get a folder named ‘SEFP’, copy that whole folder to C:/Program Files/Far/Plugin/

Now beffore we can use FAR manager with your phone, you’ll have to install the USB Flash Drivers for your Sony Ericsson phone, google search for the flash drivers for your certain model, after you’ve downloaded the flash drivers extract them to a temporary folder.

Now turn OFF your phone, keep the ‘C’ button on your phone pressed and connect the USB cable. Keep ‘C’ pressed and windows will ask you for the drivers of  the USB Flash device, just point it to the temporary USB Flash drivers folder and it’ll install the drivers. Now disconnect your phone, take out the battery for a few seconds, put it back in and start FAR manager.

Press alt+f1 and you’ll see see a menu, click ’0- Far Manager’ as shown in the image below

You’ll see a new window pop up, select your phone from the list, and select the rest of the options as they appear in the picture below. In this case I’m using a K750 so I chose the K750-w800 option from the phones list (make sure you phone is CID36)

You’ll see two options on the right side list (Flash and FS), select Flash and you’ll see a loading screen, where data is being passed. Wait for a while and now you’ll see “Memory” written on the right half of FAR manager. Now navigate the patches folder in the left half of FAR manager (the patches should be in .vkp format and be for your phone (i.e. apply patches that are for your phone model and firmware only)). Select the patches folder as shown below

After selecting that patches folder on the left side of far manager, double click it and you should see your vkp patches that (.vkp format, remember).  Now click on any patch that you want to apply to your Sony Ericsson phone and click on copy, as shown below.

Again you’ll see a new window, don’t change anything and press ‘COPY’ from the new window as shown below.

In the next window, tick the “process VKP script” option, and click on “Flash” as shown below. The vkp flashing should start now.

After the flashing is done (which takes a few seconds per patch), you’ll see a completion message.

Now you’re done. You can either choose another vkp patch to apply or you can click the “..” over the memory on the right side of far manager and choose shut down option. Once done, just take out your battery, put it back in, and turn on your phone. You are now the lucky owner of a patched sony ericsson phone with extra features  Good Luck.

P.S. You can get lots of other .vkp patches from here.

GTA: San Andreas default police car

Default Police car replaced with a DB9

You’ll be needing IMG Tool 2.0 to replace the necessary car files in GTA: San Andreas. After downloading, extract the compressed file, and run IMGTool.exe contained within. The first time you run IMG Tool, you’ll get a warning to backup your files before proceeding. Since we’ll be modifying this big IMG file called gta3.img, its a good idea to make a copy of this file (incase anything goes wrong, although i hope you’ll replace your cars without any problems if you follow the steps right). Now with the IMG Tool opened, click on File > Open to open the file browser, like shown below

IMG Tool 2.0 for GTA: San Andreas vehicles file browsing

From the browser window, select the folder where GTA is installed, and then go to the “Models”  sub folder within your main GTA folder, you’ll see a file called gta3.img there, select it and press open. Like as shown below

Open gta3.img from GTA: San Andreas/models

IMG Tool will load the gta3.img file, and show you all the contents. Now basically, every vehicle (cars, bikes, planes, helicopter etc) have two sub-files representing it in the gta3.img file.  One file looks like carXYZ.dff, which included all the geometry/model information about a car, and the second file looks like carXYZ.txd, it contains all the textures like the logos, reflection material, tyres images, seats images etc.

Since we’re going to replace a police car, you’ll have to search for the two files representing that dull police car, rename it within IMG Tool (so that we can re-use the old police car if anything goes wrong), and upload the new car’s files (in this case, Jack’s Aston Martin DB9′s files) with the same name, to IMG tool.

Download Jack’s DB9 car files here. , extract the car files to a temporary folder (you’ll notice two files named copcarsf.dff & copcarsf.txd) , now get back to IMG Tool, Go to  EDIT > Find and enter “copcarsf.dff” and press enter, you’ll find the copcarsf.dff (which is the geometry file for San Fierro’s police car), right click on that file and renamed it “2copcarsf.dff”, now again, perform another search for “copcarsf.txd”, when the file’s found, rename it to “2copcarsf.txt”. With both the default files renamed, it should look something like this.

The default .dff and .txd files for police car are renamed now

By renaming the files this way the default police car files will stay in gta3.img for backup purposes.

Now that both the files of the default police car are backed up , we can insert the Aston Martin DB9′s files to IMG Tool. Go to COMMANDs > Add , and select the copcarsf.dff file from that temporary folder that you made earlier. You’ll see DB9′s copcarsf.dff is added, now in the same way, go back to commands > add and select the copcarsf.txd file from the temporary folder.

Once the files are added, you can now run GTA: San Andreas and all you have to do find the San Fierro’s cop car now. Here’s a close up picture of how your new DB9 will look like.

Jack's Aston Martin DB9 in GTA: San Andreas, looks great

If you want to save yourself from searching for this police car, you can download my savefile, extract it in “MyDocuments/GTA San Andreas User Files” (where it’ll ask you if you want to replace an older file with my save file, click yes). And then start GTA: San Andreas, load the first save file from the list, and you’ll start with CJ’s House, go to his garage by his house, and you’ll see your shiny new DB9 waiting there for you.

You can use this guide to replace other cars etc also. For example if you download a new car that contains two files patriot.txd and patriot.dff, then you’ll simply have to open gta3.img in IMG Tool, and renamed the already present patriot.txd, patriot.dff files and insert the new files that you downloaded. Hope this guide helps you make your GTA experience better and I’m sure you’ll be interested in modding your game with new vehicles etc after this first step. P.S. If you’re followed the guide ok and are enjoying your DB9, you can now add more vehicles. For lots of cars and vehicles downloads for GTA: San Andreas, go here. Thanks to Jack for his nice DB9 model car, that he allowed me to use in this guide.