iPhone Cannot Restore Unlocked/Jailbroken 3GS

[cartzolo]

I'm having no luck trying to restore a 3GS. When the contract with AT&T terminated, my son unlocked and jailbroke the thing because he was headed to Australia for a year. Worked great in Australia, then he came home. Trying to figure out how to get it back onto AT&T, he performed a restore, only to find it impossible to activate. It cannot be activated under either Wi-Fi or iTunes. After many trials and liberal exercise of vocabulary, he bought a new iPhone.

He owes me money, so I told him I'd try to get the thing working and give it to my wife for use with Consumer Cellular. No luck with either Wi-Fi or a newly loaded iTunes, even after another restoration. Next, I tried Redsn0w with the 6.0 ipsw, but just got an "exploit failed" error. With the 5.1.1 ipsw, it gets farther, to the point where the jailbreak is turned over to the iPhone, then errors out. This is true with or without the expired sim card.

Furthering my fumbling, I tried to perform a restore with Redsn0w, but there wasn't any blobs. I tried to fetch blobs with Redsn0w, but it couldn't find any. Apparently, my son didn't save any when he did his jailbreak.

I don't really care if it's jailbroken or not, as my wife is challenged enough just using it as a cell phone. As I understand it, Consumer Cellular works with phones that were previously connected to AT&T, or if the phone is unlocked. A post suggested using Snowbreeze, but it seemed apparent that it was just a scam redirect to a proprietary unlock/jailbreak for fee.

Does anybody have a suggestion on how I might restore operability as a cell phone to this 3GS, with or without unlock/jailbreak? Thanks!

 

[darricksailo]

I'm having no luck trying to restore a 3GS. When the contract with AT&T terminated, my son unlocked and jailbroke the thing because he was headed to Australia for a year. Worked great in Australia, then he came home. Trying to figure out how to get it back onto AT&T, he performed a restore, only to find it impossible to activate. It cannot be activated under either Wi-Fi or iTunes. After many trials and liberal exercise of vocabulary, he bought a new iPhone.

He owes me money, so I told him I'd try to get the thing working and give it to my wife for use with Consumer Cellular. No luck with either Wi-Fi or a newly loaded iTunes, even after another restoration. Next, I tried Redsn0w with the 6.0 ipsw, but just got an "exploit failed" error. With the 5.1.1 ipsw, it gets farther, to the point where the jailbreak is turned over to the iPhone, then errors out. This is true with or without the expired sim card.

Furthering my fumbling, I tried to perform a restore with Redsn0w, but there wasn't any blobs. I tried to fetch blobs with Redsn0w, but it couldn't find any. Apparently, my son didn't save any when he did his jailbreak.

I don't really care if it's jailbroken or not, as my wife is challenged enough just using it as a cell phone. As I understand it, Consumer Cellular works with phones that were previously connected to AT&T, or if the phone is unlocked. A post suggested using Snowbreeze, but it seemed apparent that it was just a scam redirect to a proprietary unlock/jailbreak for fee.

Does anybody have a suggestion on how I might restore operability as a cell phone to this 3GS, with or without unlock/jailbreak? Thanks!

What baseband is the 3GS on?

 

[cartzolo]

The baseband was updated during the restore to 06.15.00. I made attempts to downgrade from iPad baseband using Redsn0w with both the 5.1.1 and 6.0 ipsw files. Neither is successful and yields the same result as a simple jailbreak.

5.1.1 completes in Redsn0w, commands start to cascade on the iPhone, but as soon as it says "Transferring control to jailbreak..." the immediate reply is:
dyld: code signature for shared cache failed with errno=7

6.0 either hangs waiting for the iPhone to reboot, or it suddenly terminates with an exploit failed before the redsn0w message that the rest of the process takes place on the iPhone.

Thanks for any help you can think of. I'm getting the feeling that Apple or AT&T finally figured out how to handcuff everyone with the new OS.

 

[dhlizard]

If you have any SHSH saved (like 5.1.1 or any iOS6 SHSH that are complete) - SHSH are required to return to newer, unsigned firmware, I recommend this:

Get rid of the iPad baseband

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/26534086824/baseband-freedom

iClarified.com has tutorials - be sure and use the older, recommended version of Redsn0w to do the removal - it may take a few tries for the downgrade to work

I recommend you restore to 4.1 to do the removal, then once on 5.13.xx, use Redsn0w to make a No_BB IPSW and go back to 5.1.1 or whatever version SHSH you have saved,

 

[TriJetHero]

A BB downgrade is a seperate process, it will not downgrade with a firmware downgrade.

Use Dhlizard's link.

 

[darricksailo]

If you have any SHSH saved (like 5.1.1 or any iOS6 SHSH that are complete) - SHSH are required to return to newer, unsigned firmware, I recommend this:

Get rid of the iPad baseband

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/26534086824/baseband-freedom

iClarified.com has tutorials - be sure and use the older, recommended version of Redsn0w to do the removal - it may take a few tries for the downgrade to work

I recommend you restore to 4.1 to do the removal, then once on 5.13.xx, use Redsn0w to make a No_BB IPSW and go back to 5.1.1 or whatever version SHSH you have saved,

Why do you recommend that version instead of the latest one?

 

[dhlizard]

Many have issues doing the downgrade on newer firmware.
Likewise, many have issues using newer Redsn0w for the downgrade.

Just want posters to have as few issues as possible.

 

[cartzolo]

Well, I suspect my troubles are that I have no SHSH files anywhere. Trying to fetch SHSH in redsn0w yields nothing.

I tried 4.2.1, but this time got an error after Redsn0w turned it over to the iPhone:
AppleBaseband: Could not find mux function

Noticed 4.1.0 was recommended, so I tried that, too. Same thing happened. Will try a few more times as suggested, but I suspect the thing is essentially bricked.

 

[dhlizard]

All 3GS can be restored to 4.1 (unless you have a hardware failure)

Make sure host file points to Apple.
Download the 4.1 IPSW to desktop
Try putting the phone in DFU mode and use iTunes to navigate to the 4.1 IPSW

 

[cartzolo]

Thanks so much for the help, and I'm sorry for my incompetence (PC guy). I have the 4.1 IPSW file, but I don't know how to verify it's pointed towards Apple. And with the PC version of iTunes, there's no control of which version is restored. It defaults to downloading the latest version.

I hoped that double-clicking on the 4.1 IPSW file would do the trick. It opened iTunes, but the restore still used version 6.3.1. The redsn0w version 5 restore bombed yesterday, but I will try it now with version 4.1.

 

[cartzolo]

Nope, no good either. Redsn0w will restore it to version 4.1 IPSW, but iPhone is subsequently locked in the restore mode. TinyUmbrella and holding buttons to quit the restore mode works, but upon reboot, back to restore mode. Only thing that works in restore mode is going into iTunes. Again, iTunes refuses to do anything except restore it to version 6.1.3, and I'm back to square 1.

 

[darricksailo]

Thanks so much for the help, and I'm sorry for my incompetence (PC guy). I have the 4.1 IPSW file, but I don't know how to verify it's pointed towards Apple. And with the PC version of iTunes, there's no control of which version is restored. It defaults to downloading the latest version.

I hoped that double-clicking on the 4.1 IPSW file would do the trick. It opened iTunes, but the restore still used version 6.3.1. The redsn0w version 5 restore bombed yesterday, but I will try it now with version 4.1.

You have to hold shift, then click restore to select the 4.1 IPSW file

 

[cartzolo]

Good news is that I have 4.1 installed on the 3GS now, but it still won't activate, and Redsn0w won't complete the jailbreak.