iPad Pro iPad Pro black screen - any touch speaks a message too fast to understand

[DeltaMac]

iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd Gen)
I am trying to fix this for a friend. Cannot shut off this IPP. Any touch to (black) screen results in a stream of unintelligible speech, lasting about one second (not much longer than that. It's too fast to understand - (could be a foreign language - my friend is from India - but the speech is TOO fast to understand anything.)
If I touch the screen again, I just get a weird beep. Wait about a minute, and a touch gives the same ultra-fast speech.

The IPP responds to a forced reboot, and I get an Apple icon - normal at that point. And, get a login screen (I think -- there's some visual elements, and some text - but that lasts only about1 second - the screen goes black, there's no time to try anything at all.
And, the screen remains black, with only the super-fast speech or beeps - until I try the force-restart again, and get the same result.

I remember reading something about a problem that some iPad users had, a couple of years ago, with a similar, very fast speech, almost like what I have now, but... I can't find any links to any information about that. I thought there were a few posts about that on this forum, but a search found nothing. Could be that I have not used the right search terms, but I can't find anything even close to what I see.
I have a MBAir, and I have Mac mini. Neither one will see the iPad Pro when I connect to a USB port. The IPP does see that something connected, because it offers that weird speech, but nothing appears on the screen, just stays black.
I might be able to post of video of what it does, but not sure how helpful a video will be.
I THINK the message is played, even without touching the screen at all, as it sometimes plays when the iPad is just moved, like the FaceID sensor notices that the light has changed --- At least I think that is what happens when I hear the "message", even though the screen was not touched at all.

Any ideas about this? I would love to have something to tell my friend.

 

[jetsam]

iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd Gen)
I am trying to fix this for a friend. Cannot shut off this IPP. Any touch to (black) screen results in a stream of unintelligible speech, lasting about one second (not much longer than that. It's too fast to understand - (could be a foreign language - my friend is from India - but the speech is TOO fast to understand anything.)
If I touch the screen again, I just get a weird beep. Wait about a minute, and a touch gives the same ultra-fast speech.

The IPP responds to a forced reboot, and I get an Apple icon - normal at that point. And, get a login screen (I think -- there's some visual elements, and some text - but that lasts only about1 second - the screen goes black, there's no time to try anything at all.
And, the screen remains black, with only the super-fast speech or beeps - until I try the force-restart again, and get the same result.

I remember reading something about a problem that some iPad users had, a couple of years ago, with a similar, very fast speech, almost like what I have now, but... I can't find any links to any information about that. I thought there were a few posts about that on this forum, but a search found nothing. Could be that I have not used the right search terms, but I can't find anything even close to what I see.
I have a MBAir, and I have Mac mini. Neither one will see the iPad Pro when I connect to a USB port. The IPP does see that something connected, because it offers that weird speech, but nothing appears on the screen, just stays black.
I might be able to post of video of what it does, but not sure how helpful a video will be.
I THINK the message is played, even without touching the screen at all, as it sometimes plays when the iPad is just moved, like the FaceID sensor notices that the light has changed --- At least I think that is what happens when I hear the "message", even though the screen was not touched at all.

Any ideas about this? I would love to have something to tell my friend.

Is it possible your friend's iPad is stuck in Voice Over?

Turn on and practice VoiceOver on iPad

If you can’t see the iPad screen, turn on VoiceOver, a gesture-based screen reader.

support.apple.com

 

[DeltaMac]

I don't know about being stuck in Voice-Over....
Even if that is possible - there is no way to get at any settings. The screen doesn't remain up for long enough to identify anything, let alone try to change a setting. (How would that even happen, and how would I get that "unstuck"?
As I said, the screen goes black after about one second, and there is nothing visible on the screen until the next time I do a force-restart.

 

[jetsam]

I don't know about being stuck in Voice-Over....
Even if that is possible - there is no way to get at any settings. The screen doesn't remain up for long enough to identify anything, let alone try to change a setting. (How would that even happen, and how would I get that "unstuck"?
As I said, the screen goes black after about one second, and there is nothing visible on the screen until the next time I do a force-restart.

It's just my educated guess that the problem is voice over.

Voice Over is for vision-impaired users for whom the screen is not useful. The screen being black, with talking, suggests the iPad is in Voice Over mode. And one of Voice Over's options is speaking rate.

I have no idea how your friend's iPad could have gotten into that mode.

The link I gave you includes ways to turn off Voice Over without using the screen.

 

[DeltaMac]

Some progress... I have been able to boot to recovery mode on this iPad.
So, perhaps updating will work (before I try a restore - there doesn't appear to be a backup, and I don't know how to do that from recovery mode, anyway)
And, I have to contact my friend to ask if he had already updated to 15.3 version. I hope so.

 

[DeltaMac]

Bad stuff....
I tried to simply update.
Seemed to be going OK, and appeared to be finished, when I got a "Swipe up to recover" and...
it won't accept any kind of swipe. I have tried one finger, two, three and four fingers. Tried various directions instead of "up", and the only result was that randomly, it would suddenly bring up a passcode entry screen. And, the screen refuses to accept ANY keypresses. I get a "beep", which seems to echo the number that I press, but no entry results in any actual entry to the keycode blocks. They simply remain blank.
I can't find anything on the 'net that shows any way to troubleshoot this, other than trying the update again (now done that about 10 times, with no change - seems to get close to an end for the update, then get the "Swipe..." screen, then no-go at that point.
I am beginning to thing that the only way forward is to do a full restore, which of course, deletes everything. Got to talk to my friend (who is unavailable at the moment), so he knows what I am doing here, and what happens next.

Is there anyone who can offer me any other path now, other than full restore?

 

[Reggaenald]

A video in slow mo might show what the text says, also for archival purposes it would be great. Visual evidence to send to Cupertino is also a lot more telling than just an eye witness report.
To me this whole things seems very freaky. I’d try to but the device in DFU mode and reset it completely and start from scratch.

 

[DeltaMac]

Yes, here's what I found...
I did turn off the "high-speed gibberish" which appeared to be VoiceOver, at maximum speed.
But, screen would go black a few seconds after booting, with the only way to get the screen to turn on would be to force restart, and the screen just simply returns to black.
DFU mode is very hard to enter on this iPad, taking at least 10 tries to successfully enter DFU, always using the same Vol-up, Vol-down, then hold the sleep button. very frustrating.
Then, get the window to either update or restore. Tried "update" multiple times, which appears to complete, then get a white screen "swipe up to Recover". Tried multiple different methods here, one-finger, two, three, four. Nothing that I do gets a successful swipe. Then, suddenly, a passcode screen comes up, which either beeps, or speaks the number pressed - but no success, the passcode blocks (those little dots) do not ever show any entry - So, I try to assume that it takes the characters, regardless of what it looks like.
But, cannot get beyond that passcode entry screen. I have tried this dozens of times, plugged in to different Macs, or not plugged in to anything, don't know what else to try. Always get the no-response passcode entry screen (which actually does an audio response -- it reads each number that I press on the keypad, and I hear the correct number entered, it just is never reflected as an entry above the keypad

My take on this is that the iPad Pro has a firmware issue, that will not be fixed without trying a factory restore.
I have been trying other methods, without success. I have to contact the owner, so he knows what I want to do (erase everything - I don't think he has a backup of any kind, so gotta be sure that he knows a full erase/restore is the only path forward.

Do you think I have missed anything?

 

[Reggaenald]

Yes, here's what I found...
I did turn off the "high-speed gibberish" which appeared to be VoiceOver, at maximum speed.
But, screen would go black a few seconds after booting, with the only way to get the screen to turn on would be to force restart, and the screen just simply returns to black.
DFU mode is very hard to enter on this iPad, taking at least 10 tries to successfully enter DFU, always using the same Vol-up, Vol-down, then hold the sleep button. very frustrating.
Then, get the window to either update or restore. Tried "update" multiple times, which appears to complete, then get a white screen "swipe up to Recover". Tried multiple different methods here, one-finger, two, three, four. Nothing that I do gets a successful swipe. Then, suddenly, a passcode screen comes up, which either beeps, or speaks the number pressed - but no success, the passcode blocks (those little dots) do not ever show any entry - So, I try to assume that it takes the characters, regardless of what it looks like.
But, cannot get beyond that passcode entry screen. I have tried this dozens of times, plugged in to different Macs, or not plugged in to anything, don't know what else to try. Always get the no-response passcode entry screen (which actually does an audio response -- it reads each number that I press on the keypad, and I hear the correct number entered, it just is never reflected as an entry above the keypad

My take on this is that the iPad Pro has a firmware issue, that will not be fixed without trying a factory restore.
I have been trying other methods, without success. I have to contact the owner, so he knows what I want to do (erase everything - I don't think he has a backup of any kind, so gotta be sure that he knows a full erase/restore is the only path forward.

Do you think I have missed anything?

Sounds “right” to me, but a complete restore is the only thing that could work at this point. Next thing would be a visit at a Genius Bar, and considering what you’ve described so far it’d take some hours for them to do the same things and then restore it themselves anyway.

 

[DeltaMac]

Ah, yes, you are correct...
This iPad would not show up as a normal device, at all --- and I have a wide range of Macs that I use each day, from an eMac to a MBAir, couple of other, older MBPros, 2 Mac minis, a couple of older iMacs.
None would show this iPad in System Information connected through USB, and very flaky to even show up in DFU mode.

A full restore fixed it immediately.
I usually would go to a restore very quickly, but in this cirucumstance, there was some delay in contacting my friend, and I had to know that he either had a backup -- or he did not care about losing everything. It all came together, after I had a bit of conversation with the owner.
Thanks for you help!