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iPhone 4 won't go into DFU mode and is not recognized by PC

R

reaper702

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 16, 2011
6
0
Ok so just recently my iPhone 4 has been acting up and I'm stumped. My iPhone is not recognized by any PC (my desktop and laptop as well as a friends PC) and also not recognized by my Pioneer head unit in my car. It will not charge when connected to anything unless its directly in to the wall outlet. My gf's iPhone 3g and her niece's iPhone 4 both hook up just fine on the same PCs and my iPod works just fine on the head unit in my car. I try getting it into DFU mode and it will not do it. It just turns off completely. I can get it into the screen where it says to connect to iTunes but it still isn't recognized.

*Clearly this is something that is wrong with the phone. Before anyone mentions that I might not be doing it right to get it into DFU mode please know I have done this dozens of times to JB my phone and other ppls phones easily. I can do it on my gf's 3g with no issues either.*

Something that I should mention that may have caused this is that the last time I synced my iPhone to my PC I got a text message in the middle of the sync process. That is the only thing I can think of that may have caused this issue. If anyone has any other suggestions or solution I would greatly appreciate it.
 
My problem is I can only get it into DFU mode when connected to a wall socket, which is useless, as soon as I disconnect the cable the phone dies, if I connect it to the p.c. I get a 7 second boot loop which is not long enough to force DFU mode, I can get into recovery mode but it's useless to me as I cannot complete a restore in this mode as the phone dies at the beginning.
 
Yup tiny umbrella didn't work. It doesn't recognize my iphone at all. Still with the same issue and looks like I'm SOL with this.
 
choppy, what exactly are your symptoms?

If you find that your device will only power on if connected to some sort of charger, always goes to the "plug into iTunes" screen when it is connected to a charger, and always fails the restore process with an error 21/1/similar "iTunes-can't-find-the-device" error, then in my experience... the logic board is cactus and the rest of the phone is spare parts.

If the phone acts in any way, or if you're unsure, then elaborate on what it's doing.
 
When I have the phone unplugged and charged it will turn on and show the Apple logo, this will display for about 10 secondes before fading and rebooting to the logo again. This just repeats continually. I can turn the phone off but any attempt to get into DFU/Recovery just results in the logo loop again.

If the phone is plugged into the wall it's the same but I can't turn it off. If it;s plugged into my Mac or laptop it does the same thing, logo loop and I can't turn it off. I took it apart and disconnected the lightning port connector from the logic board, when I turned the phone on (disconnected) like this I got the same result but seemed to get a more responsive shutdown (i.e. I wouldn't have to wait for the boot loop to finish a run-through before it turned off). Obviously I couldn't plug it in because the lightning port was disconnected at this point.

I've ordered another lightning port which should arrive tomorrow, if it doesn't make any difference I'm back to being totally stuck again.

I hope my explanation is clear/detailed enough if I've missed anything I can try to give more info.

Thanks.
 
If you can't put the device in DFU then clearly its hardware related whether it be from a bad logic board or liquid damage. If it was just a battery issue, you would get the battery indicator.
 
I do get the battery indicator but only when it's flat, it comes up with just the empty battery with one red bar. Once it's charged though it disappears so I'm just holding out for it being a lightning issue.
 
If you're lucky, it might just be a busted / flaky home or power button.

Assuming service isn't an option, I would put the phone aside until I got my hands on another 5 I could open. The logic board could then be switched over - if it behaves the same in the new shell, you know it's toast. If it lets you restore it that way, then it should be fairly easy to work out what's wrong with the rest of the original phone from that point.
 
My friend tried to replace the glass on her 5 and ended up killing the screen totally, I'll see if I can get my hands on it so I can test mine and hopefully repair both. Thanks for your replies, I'll update when my LP arrives tomorrow.
 
I forgot to mention, the phone was working fine (but randomly shut down at abou 30%) until I left it plugged into my MacBook Pro overnight - the MacBook wasn't plugged in - and when I came in the next day the iPhone battery was totally flat with the flashing battery image. When I recharged it I was greeted with the boot loop.
 
So I've replaced the lightning port and I can now get the phone into recovery and DFU but...I keep getting error 9 when I try to restore from iTunes. I;ve tried different USB ports and computers but no luck. Is there any way to flash iOS outside of iTunes? It will have to be iOS 8.1, I've tried flashing it through Pangu (using the new recovery feature) but it keeps saying my iTunes is out of date which it isn't?
 
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