Where to Restoring iPhone? (needs iTunes)

EuKaryMe

My iPhone mysteriously doesn't have the app store feature, and also doesn't have any browser. When I got onto Apple Care they told me that I'd need to restore the phone in order to update my software, in order to get these features.

I need to restore the phone via iTunes. I can't restore my phone where I'm living at the moment because we lose our internet connection every 30 minutes. Restoring the phone takes about 90 minutes. Is my only option to take my PC somewhere with WiFi and wait there two hours for it to restore. Is there anything else I could do.

Davy

Are you missing the App Store and safari because you have restrictions switched on?

This is usually why they are missing.

duridian

It’s probably well worth checking out what Davy suggests first before resorting to restoring from firmware in iTunes which is kind of a major thing to do. But if you’ve no other option but restoring it then I have a suggestion for getting around the broken down internet problem.

If you’re using Windows, you might be able to download the entire firmware in stages, using a download manager that allows resuming of the download, from a helpful site like https://ipsw.me

I’d suggest getting the portable version of uGet download manager, as you wouldn’t need to install it, just unzip it and run. It is a very decent download manager and allows resuming broken downloads if your internet goes down. You could copy the download link from that site into uGet and resume until it completes successfully.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/urlget/

Once you have the 2 to 3Gb complete iPhone 6 IPSW file downloaded safely you should manually copy and paste the file to where iTunes stores the iOS firmware. Don’t move the file, copy and paste it instead just in case something goes wrong and iTunes removes the massive file leaving you to download it again.

It should be located at :

Windows 8 & Windows 10: C:\\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\

Windows Vista & Windows 7: C:\\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates.

Replace “USERNAME” with yours for the right folder.
With Windows 10 and Windows 8, look for the appropriate Software Update folder within that directory. If you’ve tried and failed directly updating with iTunes then the folder name for iPhone should already exist.
Once iTunes detects and verifies a complete IPSW of the latest firmware in that folder, it will use that without trying to download.
Beware that restoring the phone is essentially wiping it clean and starting fresh, so back up anything you don’t want to lose, and make sure you know the AppleID and password plus your passcode as these will be needed when setting up iPhone afterwards.

Source of some of the info: http://osxdaily.com/2010/12/08/ipsw-file-location-mac-and-windows/

EuKaryMe

Davy wrote: »

Are you missing the App Store and safari because you have restrictions switched on?

This is usually why they are missing.

Thanks

It's 'on' at the moment. But guess what, it requires a password. I must ask the previous owner for the password. I thought the one from Apple would have thought of that while on the phone.

I do have to wonder how come these buttons, in settings, keep getting switched on and off by themselves!! For example last year when I was still on the ancient O2 flat rate plan, I was getting charged €2 a day for internet use because some button was switched on.

EuKaryMe

Thanks

duridian wrote: »

It’s probably well worth checking out what Davy suggests first before resorting to restoring from firmware in iTunes which is kind of a major thing to do. But if you’ve no other option but restoring it then I have a suggestion for getting around the broken down internet problem.

If you’re using Windows, you might be able to download the entire firmware in stages, using a download manager that allows resuming of the download, from a helpful site like https://ipsw.me

I’d suggest getting the portable version of uGet download manager, as you wouldn’t need to install it, just unzip it and run. It is a very decent download manager and allows resuming broken downloads if your internet goes down. You could copy the download link from that site into uGet and resume until it completes successfully.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/urlget/

Once you have the 2 to 3Gb complete iPhone 6 IPSW file downloaded safely you should manually copy and paste the file to where iTunes stores the iOS firmware. Don’t move the file, copy and paste it instead just in case something goes wrong and iTunes removes the massive file leaving you to download it again.

It should be located at :

Windows 8 & Windows 10: C:\\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\

Windows Vista & Windows 7: C:\\Usersame\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates.

Replace “USERNAME” with yours for the right folder.
With Windows 10 and Windows 8, look for the appropriate Software Update folder within that directory. If you’ve tried and failed directly updating with iTunes then the folder name for iPhone should already exist.
Once iTunes detects and verifies a complete IPSW of the latest firmware in that folder, it will use that without trying to download.
Beware that restoring the phone is essentially wiping it clean and starting fresh, so back up anything you don’t want to lose, and make sure you know the AppleID and password plus your passcode as these will be needed when setting up iPhone afterwards.

Source of some of the info: http://osxdaily.com/2010/12/08/ipsw-file-location-mac-and-windows/

Jesus, maybe I'll sacrifice a day off some time next week.