iPhone 3Gs: itunes screen of death

Paley

Yesderday I tried to update the software on my iphone 3GSvia itunes but midway through the process a notification appeared on the itunes screen stating that the update failed.

Unfortunately, the iphone itself appears to be permanently stuck in update mode: there is a graphic on screen of a white usb connection and the itunes logo.

After reading some advice from around the net I tried various combinations of pressing the off button simultaneously with the home button. The itunes screen of death remains.

Apple support advised restoring the phone to its factory settings. However to do this I have to be able to see the device in itunes, and it is not showing at all. This is not a problem with itunes or the cable as my ipad is showing up there.

Any advice appreciated.

biko

Does it look like this?



Apparently there's a piece of software that might fix it, or not...
TinyUmbrella

http://www.simonblog.com/2010/09/11/how-to-fix-itunes-1004-error-and-kick-iphone-out-of-recovery-mode/

guil

Put it onto DFU mode and iTunes will recognise it. Press and hold the home and sleep buttons together and let go of the sleep button after 10 seconds but keep holding the home button. A popup will appear in iTunes saying it has detected an iPhone in recovery mode and click restore

biko

So how did it go OP?

Paley

biko wrote: »

So how did it go OP?

No luck I'm afraid. I tried the guil's suggestion first and while it did end the itunes screen of death, the phone is stuck in an off mode (blank, dark screen).

Itunes still does not recognise that the phone is connected at all and that seems to me to be the big problem as it is hard to go forward from there.

After that I tried the tiny umbrella solution. The program didn't run properly on the computer and I am not sure why. I'll try again later and see if I can figure out what's wrong there.

Thanks to you both for the suggestions. It is good to have at least some pointers as to how to move forward.

guil

uninstall itunes and stop any apple services that are running, reinstall itunes and then plug in the iphone

kjl

if you are on a windows pc, create a new user and try it there.

collier

This happened me the other day my solution was to use pwnagetool then open iTunes hold alt and click restore choose the iOS 4.3.3 firmware file this should restore the phone then let it sync with iTunes and use the update on iTunes to go to 4.3.5.

Apologies for not including links I am on the iPhone posting this.

CathalDublin

I've fixed this exact problem a few times in the last month or two, I guarantee this will work for you - this will even work with ipad baseband 06.15.00 installed

1.Put in DFU mode first(using pawnage tool, ireb, etc)*
2.Open itunes and press Shift(option)+click restore, choose the original 4.1 firmware downloaded from http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/
If you get the error "iphone not eligible for the requested build", open your systems hosts file and remove any lines with gs.apple.com in them.
If you get error16xx, this just open tiny umbrella and click exit recovery.

*If your screen is black and you cant get the phone in DFU mode, open tinyumbrella click fix recovery and the screen should eventually turn white, When it turns white, it will stay like this, exit tinyumbrella and then try put in DFU mode.
I've only ever had one phone which I was unable to un(brick) using this method i've recovered over 100 iphone 3G/3Gs.

Paley

Hi folks,
thanks for the various suggestions but unfortunately nothing has worked. Any solution seems to depend on the computer knowing the iphone is connected up, e.g. tiny umbrella can't kick the phone into restore mode if it doesn't see it. These programs do see my ipad so I don't think the problem is at their end.

At this point I'm tempted to prise open the phone and attempt to physically reset it, if that is possible.

CathalDublin

Paley wrote: »

Hi folks,
thanks for the various suggestions but unfortunately nothing has worked. Any solution seems to depend on the computer knowing the iphone is connected up, e.g. tiny umbrella can't kick the phone into restore mode if it doesn't see it. These programs do see my ipad so I don't think the problem is at their end.

At this point I'm tempted to prise open the phone and attempt to physically reset it, if that is possible.

Be careful opening it, do it correctly and remove the logic board for 30minutes. this should reset the nand flash.
In tinyumbrella are all three buttons greyed out(enter recovery, exit recover and fix recovery)?
with tinyumbrella open hold in home&power and see if any of the three buttons become clickable, the fix recovery should become clickable

fox007

CathalDublin wrote: »

Paley wrote: »

Hi folks,
thanks for the various suggestions but unfortunately nothing has worked. Any solution seems to depend on the computer knowing the iphone is connected up, e.g. tiny umbrella can't kick the phone into restore mode if it doesn't see it. These programs do see my ipad so I don't think the problem is at their end.

At this point I'm tempted to prise open the phone and attempt to physically reset it, if that is possible.

Be careful opening it, do it correctly and remove the logic board for 30minutes. this should reset the nand flash.
In tinyumbrella are all three buttons greyed out(enter recovery, exit recover and fix recovery)?
with tinyumbrella open hold in home&power and see if any of the three buttons become clickable, the fix recovery should become clickable

Op in tiny umbrella if the box is ticked for the host gs.apple.com file etc untick that box as it will NOT LET THE IPHONE UPDATE or restore to 4.2 etc try that then remove tiny or if you plug your device inti another pc/mac hit restore it should work also.let's know how that goes

Paley

I thought it would be worth mentioning, in case people with similar problems in the future arrive here via google, that the problem was solved by Cathal (who was posting in this thread). He used some combination of pressing the home and sleep buttons and tiny umbrella. So it's solvable with that method.

Thanks for the help folks.