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Another Pwnage bricked iPhone sad story

J

jbaugh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 15, 2005
14
0
Upon upgrading my wife and I to 3g iPhones, we gave my daughter the old iPhone to use basically as an iPod Touch.

My daughter proceeded to modify the iPhone with the Pwnage Tool software. In this she was successful. Then she got cold feet and decided to restore the original settings. Unfortunately, she did not understand how to do this. She ran Bootneuter and made some modification before trying to restore the iPhone under iTunes.

Now we have an iPhone that will start up with the pineapple logo showing briefly and then immediate switch to the "restore" mode (a screen with a cartoon of Steve Jobs holding his hands up with non-English text in a balloon). Innumerable attempts to restore the original Apple firmware on multiple macs and on Windows have been unsuccessful. Likewise, attempts to "fix" things by running Pwnage Tool and attempting re-install all give the same error message in iTunes.

Is this a totally lost cause? I have entertained some vestige of hope since the phone is not totally dead. It does power up and switch into the Pwnage restore mode. I suspect that whatever my daughter did with Bootneuter has damaged essential boot files?

Any ideas or thoughts will be appreciated. I suspect there are many others out there with the same or similar sad stories of bricked iPhones.

Thanks,
John
 
new problem

Okay my dad was the one who posted about Sad iphone story. I am now stuck on the emergency call screen. What do I need to do?
 
i had the same problem. It would pineapple and then restart and back to pineapple.

I re pwned it, forced it into DFU then quit Pwnage as instructed. Plugged into itunes and it gave me the phone in recovery mode message. I then did a restore with Apple official firmware and got a working 2.0 but it was locked and in emergency mode. So maybe where you are at.

I then did a pwn and used expert mode ON ANOTHER MAC, didn't change anything but used expert mode and restored to the pwned firmware and now my phone works !

good luck.
 
Still in recovery mode

Okay I tried to restore, waited about 1 hr. Went to bed around 11.00 pm, Now
6:30 and still in restoring iPhone software. Is there anything else we can try? Thanks a bunch for the support. Oh also on the iPhone screen shows the apple with it still spinning. I am ready to give up if I fail again. We have been trying to fix it since Saturday. Please help.
 
jeckybaugh said:
Okay I tried to restore, waited about 1 hr. Went to bed around 11.00 pm, Now
6:30 and still in restoring iPhone software. Is there anything else we can try? Thanks a bunch for the support. Oh also on the iPhone screen shows the apple with it still spinning. I am ready to give up if I fail again. We have been trying to fix it since Saturday. Please help.
Click to expand...

when you plugged it in to kick off the restore, was there something displayed on the screen of the iphone?
 
usb 2 itunes

The usb to itunes is displayed. I have tried to restore several times to other versions. I now do not know what version I am at. I know itunes is 7.5.(it was 7.7) I downgraded to 7.5.
 
apparently you got the phone back when it was at the emergency screen. If It were me I would run pwnage tool again and make a new ipsw but this time having it activate the phone. Then ii would put it back into dfu mode and restore it in itunes with the ipsw activated firmware. this should get you into the phone fine to use it as an ipod. Personally unless your gonna be trying to use it with another carrier I wouldnt mess with the bootloader at all.

and BTW with the pwnage tool it requires 7.7 so i would get it back to the emergency screen, then update itunes. Then update to your new firmware.
 
jeckybaugh said:
The usb to itunes is displayed. I have tried to restore several times to other versions. I now do not know what version I am at. I know itunes is 7.5.(it was 7.7) I downgraded to 7.5.
Click to expand...

The screen should be completely black. Hold the power button and home button. About a half second after the phone resets let go of the power button and keep holding the home button. Do this while connected to itunes and after a few seconds you'll get a message in itunes.
 
Preparing iphone for restore

screen went blank. Apple logo booted back up. It seems to be stuck on preparing iphone for restore. Is there a problem? or Should I just keep it plugged in until it gives me an error message?
 
error message

Got an error message 1604. That is a bad sign isn't it. Is this a lost cause? if so I thank you for all your help. please just tell me if you think this is a lost cause if it is. Thanks again
 
jeckybaugh said:
screen went blank. Apple logo booted back up. It seems to be stuck on preparing iphone for restore. Is there a problem? or Should I just keep it plugged in until it gives me an error message?
Click to expand...

If the apple logo appeared the the phone didn't go into DFU mode. If you put the phone in DFU mode you won't get errors. If you're using a Mac make sure Classic isn't running.
 
LSUtigers03 said:
The screen should be completely black. Hold the power button and home button. About a half second after the phone resets let go of the power button and keep holding the home button. Do this while connected to itunes and after a few seconds you'll get a message in itunes.
Click to expand...

exactly, there should be NOTHING on the screen, it should appear as though it is off
 
Finally After 3 days unlocked iphone

unlock iPhone. We are not sure what we did. Trying to restore many times. Finally we got the emergency call screen. Used ziphone numerous time. Boom
every thing worked. Thanks for the support. I am now at 1.1.1, Want to know if upgrading will lock it up again? Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
 
The 1604 error can be tricky.

If you Google it, you'll likely find more than a dozen "solutions."

You may have to try them all, unfortunately, until one finally works.
 
Tricky alright.

I'm quiet curious - Does anyone what know what these error codes actually mean?
Does anyone know what conditions have to present in order for the error to be reported?

I've been searching online, but I haven't found out yet.
The apple documentation on their site gives some solution to iphone errors,
but they don't really spell out exactly what the error means.

Anyway, I'll post back in a while when I've tried to conquer the deadly 1600.

Cheers
 
3rd party apps won't run.

I finally got my iphone to restore and used ziphone to unlock it and activate. Then upgraded back to current 2.0 software. now everything to do with apple apps works but not 3rd party apps. This is so frustrating. :rolleyes:
 
jeckybaugh said:
I finally got my iphone to restore and used ziphone to unlock it and activate. Then upgraded back to current 2.0 software. now everything to do with apple apps works but not 3rd party apps. This is so frustrating. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

you are making this way to complicated.

1) download pwnage for whatever operating system you have
2) download the iphone 2.0 firmware
3) put the phone in DFU mode
4) follow the step by step directions in pwnage, it holds your hand the whole way
 
illidian said:
Just google the errors for fixes.
Click to expand...


Different people give different fixes for these errors.
I haven't yet been able to find anywhere near the exact meaning of the errors.
They simply don't seem to be posted anywhere.

I am, and will continue to try the various fixes.
None have worked so far.

I'm sure that I'll get this iphone working again somehow, thanks to the free tools and these kind assistance on these forums.

But I still think that any user is in a more informed, maybe even more powerful position when given the actual meanings of the error messages rather than having to guess at them.
 
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