Installing Android Kitkat 4.4 on a Barnes & Noble Nook Color

I thought i'd upgrade my ancient Nook Color from 2010 with something a bit newer. Previously I'd attempted to install Jelly Bean on the SD Card and while it was good,  I was kinda wasting a 32GB SD card i needed for something else.

This time I wanted to install onto the built in ram storage, aka the eMMC.

While there is a plethora of info over at XDA on the subject, there didnt seem to be a guide to getting CM11 (KitKat) onto the eMMC. Lots of guides for CM7 (Gingerbread) through to CM10 (Jelly Bean). And the most popular way seems to be to install onto SD Card.

I had no further use for the Barnes & Noble OS variant on the device though, set about gathering the necessary zips and images to flash Android KitKat onto my Nook Color.

You will need:

1. MicroSD Card of at least 1GB
2. Win32DiskImager for writing the disk image to the SD card
3. Bootable SD card image with ClockworkMod ROM manager with 6.0.1.2
4. ClockworkMod ROM manager 6.0.4.8 in or higher in zip form
5. CyanogenMod Android CM11 image - M11 snapshot
6. Google Apps from 2014-01-05

To install CM11 successfully you need CWM 6.0.4.8 or higher. I couldnt find a bootable SD card image for eMMC higher than 6.0.1.2 so you'll need to install that first, and then use the "install from zip" option on the CWM menu to then install the 6.0.4.8 CWM. After you've installed 6.0.4.8, you can boot into eMMC recovery, and install the CM11 snapshot zip, and after that the gapps zip (make sure its the "small" version of kitkat gapps).

1. Install Win32DiskImager
2. Flash the 6.0.1.2 img file (inside the zip) to the SD card
3. Take out the SD Card and re-insert so that the OS recognizes the correct image size.
4. Copy over the remaining zips (CWM6048, CM11 and gapps). Do not unzip them.
5. Insert the SD card into the Nook and reboot. It should install CWM.
6. Boot into recovery (power + n) and install the zips in the order above.

You may want to also perform a cache wipe. You should now have an installed version of Kitkat in the eMMC on your Nook. The only snag I can see is that the CWM may not install from the image into the eMMC recovery. I came from a version of Cyanoboot that was also on there but I chose Boot from eMMC recovery which is the same as forcing boot from recovery with the key combination.

After this you're good to go. But some further notes first. You need the smaller google apps because the install partition on the eMMC is quite small so do not choose the 20140606 build, but choose the 20140105 build. I chose the M11 snapshot because of reading that there were problems installing the M12 snapshot and further nightly builds directly from CWM. However, you can upgrade to those builds afterwards if you want (to enable Netflix for example), using the inbuilt updater in CM or CyanDelta (if its working at the moment). Also, I couldnt find a TWRP Touch installer that would work with CM11 so I reverted to CWM.

Here are the links to the files:
Win32DiskImager
Cyanogenmod Snapshots
eMMC ClockworkMod 6.0.1.2 image (scroll to bottom of post - its called CWM-6.0.1.2-bootable_SD.zip)
Clockworkmod 6.0.4.8 zip
Google Apps 20140105 

Further helpful posts (without this help I would not be writing this):
How to Install CyanogenMod on the Barnes & Noble Nook Color ("encore")
Nook Color User Tips for CM7/CM9/CM10/CM10.1 From LeapinLar
[HOW-TO] Installing CM11 Internally on Nook Tablet
[INFO][HELP][FIXES][HOW TO] Collection of Help - Info postings for the Nook Color 
[GUIDE] Install CM7 or CM10 + Recovery to EMMC - ALL NOOK COLORS!