Help with Galaxy Nexus root

[Liminal Doughnut]

I have a Galaxy Nexus i515 (Verizon LTE version) running 4.2.2. I rooted it but forgot to make a system backup and didn't install any special recoveries. Once I was rooted, I installed SoftkeyZ (an app that can change the look of the android soft keys). After a few days, I rebooted my phone for whatever reason and the soft keys disappeared altogether. Reinstalling the app did nothing, rebooting the phone did nothing, factory resetting did nothing. I've been trying to find a way to completely unroot and flash the stock OS, but for whatever reason Odin won't recognize my phone when its in recovery mode and I can't figure out how to do anything. Any help or ideas would be much appreciated. 

[krkevin]

WARNING: rooting android is useless unless you plan on doing backups. Android is ALREADY so customizable  it doesn't need a risky root, and also the voiding of the warranty.

 

Rooting just makes your phone more prone to risks, therefore damaging your software, and possibly rendering your phone software-less. Rooting/jailbreaking only makes sense on iOS, but almost never on android. Hope this helped.

Contact Google or Samsung, and maybe they'll fix it for a small fee.

[komaru]

You'll need a computer and a the system image for your phone. Completely re-flash the phone back to stock and re-root if you want to. I'd highly recommend using and alternative recovery (like TWRP) and making a backup of your phone's system partition before rooting (easier to install than re-flashing).

 

As for what krkevin said, I don't agree. Rooting is just a way to enable modification of system files. Android OS is based off the Linux kernel, and "rooting" allows the user the have root privileges.  It is risky. It does void most warranties. That said, it allows more customization and tweaks than what Android can by default. As long as one is careful with what they allow to use root access, then all is good.