iOS reinstall help

[Sparky2012]

Hello All,

I’m looking for some help with reinstalling iOS 16.4 on an iPhone 11.

This is for a friend whose phone will NOT backup at all to iCloud or a Mac (Have tried numerous times) - when trying iCloud backup it just stays on ‘Estimating Time Remaining’ - it was left 24+ hours and failed to progress. Similar story on the Mac where when attempting to back up it just stalls.

It has never backed up to iCloud.
It backed up to the Mac last year but this data is now too old for them to want to restore.

Have tried the following to resolve the iCloud backup issue:

- Hard reset phone.
- Turned off iCloud backup > restarted phone > re-enabled and retried backup.
- Signed out of iCloud > restarted phone > signed back in > re-attempted iCloud backup.
- Tried resetting network settings on the phone.
- Tried an alternative DNS server.
- Tried allowing iCloud backup via mobile data then switching to Mobile Data and attempting a manual backup.

NOTE: device was connected to power for all scenarios.

Have tried the following to resolve the issue with the phone backing up to the Mac:

- Updated MacOS to latest version of Ventura.
- Restarted Mac and iPhone > retried backup.

I believe there was a way in the past to reinstall iOS while RETAINING all data on the device. I managed to successfully perform this once however I now forget the steps. Can anyone please help? Thanks!

 

[Spline]

First resort would be to try Restore, which depends on a useable backup, so it seems that option is out.

Second is Recovery (DFU), where first you select Update during the process and it tries to retain your data. If that fails, you'd opt for Restore within the DFU process, but you'd lose the data. (See the link for the exact steps.) Before you pull the trigger on the nuclear restore you might want to talk to Apple support.

 

[Pixels7]

Have you tried backing up to a windows computer/ laptop, via iTunes? Sounds weird, but that helped me once. Also my partner his iPhone SE couldn’t back up via itunes to his windows laptop last year, but it did back up to mine.. (also windows).

 

[Sparky2012]

Have you tried backing up to a windows computer/ laptop, via iTunes? Sounds weird, but that helped me once. Also my partner his iPhone SE couldn’t back up via itunes to his windows laptop last year, but it did back up to mine.. (also windows).

I haven’t tried this. Wonder why it’d work on one but not the other… will keep in mind. Thanks.