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iPhone stuck on infinite boot loop

redbeard331

redbeard331

Suspended
Original poster
Jul 21, 2009
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Ok so I'm hoping I can find a solution here. I've got a iPhone 6S+ on 9.02, I didn't do anything out of the ordinary, was just using my phone when it froze on me so I attempted a reboot. The phone never came back on, was unresponsive, just a blank black screen, only doing another reboot would make the apple logo turn on.

I've tried all the tricks to get it to boot back up, haven't been able to get it to work yet. It seems like it may be in recovery mode or dfu mode, just can't tell. I really don't want to lose my jailbreak, so I want to explore all options before restoring, but I can live with that. What would really hurt is to lose all my pictures and data that hasn't been backed up yet.

I appreciate any help!
 
When you say you've tried "all the tricks" did that include holding down the volume up button on boot?

That would get you to Safe Mode. You could then troubleshoot from there.

If you did and that doesn't work you might try some of the older freeware JB utility apps out there that let you kick phones out of recovery mode. Tiny Umbrella is one I think.

If that doesn't work then a DFU restore is your only option - assuming that this issue was not caused by a hardware fault.
 
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eyoungren said:
When you say you've tried "all the tricks" did that include holding down the volume up button on boot?

That would get you to Safe Mode. You could then troubleshoot from there.
Click to expand...

Yea I've tried that many times, every time I do the phone first shows the apple logo then the screen goes dark, I'm pretty sure I've done it right but I'm not sure. Want to try everything before having to restore.

If you did and that doesn't work you might try some of the older freeware JB utility apps out there that let you kick phones out of recovery mode. Tiny Umbrella is one I think.

If that doesn't work then a DFU restore is your only option - assuming that this issue was not caused by a hardware fault.
Click to expand...

I haven't tried tiny umbrella yet, I've tried a few others though and they either cannot recognize my phone until I put it into recovery mode, or they just don't seem to work.

Thanks for the help
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Applejuiced said:
Yes, what Eric said above.
If you can't get it into safe mode and load into your home screen then only other option would be to restore to the latest iOS version.
Click to expand...

Carlanga said:
Dfu then restore as new
Click to expand...

Ok, well then if that turns out to be my only option, is there a way to extract my pictures and any other data off the phone in the state its in before restoring? It would be extremely painful to lose everything as I haven't been able to back anything up for awhile.
 
redbeard331 said:
Damn, that's a hard lesson to learn...
Click to expand...
If we were able to roll the clock back and catch you before doing this there would have been options.

Cydia Impactor might have worked to restore you back to 9.0.2 unjailbroken (allowing you to jailbreak again), or simply uninstalling Mobile Substrate from within Cydia would have had the effect of removing all installed tweaks.

As to why you should not do what you did…

Well, you see, modern jailbreaks do a fair amount of moving around native files and stock apps between the root and user partition. When you restore the system is expecting those files and apps to be where they would be if you were stock.

Since the JB has moved these files and stock apps they aren't where the system expects them to be and because of that booting fails. The system bootloops over and over because it cannot proceed any farther in the boot sequence without those missing files and stock apps.

I know that's cold comfort but it may help to know just what it was that happened.
 
eyoungren said:
If we were able to roll the clock back and catch you before doing this there would have been options.

Cydia Impactor might have worked to restore you back to 9.0.2 unjailbroken (allowing you to jailbreak again), or simply uninstalling Mobile Substrate from within Cydia would have had the effect of removing all installed tweaks.

As to why you should not do what you did…

Well, you see, modern jailbreaks do a fair amount of moving around native files and stock apps between the root and user partition. When you restore the system is expecting those files and apps to be where they would be if you were stock.

Since the JB has moved these files and stock apps they aren't where the system expects them to be and because of that booting fails. The system bootloops over and over because it cannot proceed any farther in the boot sequence without those missing files and stock apps.

I know that's cold comfort but it may help to know just what it was that happened.
Click to expand...

With cydia impactor is this something that has to be installed before you get in one of these boot loops? Or are you saying there's a way to get into it right now?
 
redbeard331 said:
With cydia impactor is this something that has to be installed before you get in one of these boot loops? Or are you saying there's a way to get into it right now?
Click to expand...
It would have had to have been run when you were jailbroken as an install from Cydia.

It works for devices on iOS 8, but there is a beta for 9 that works 50% of the time - which is why I mentioned it might work.

The opportunity to use it is now past.
 
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Ok well in an interesting turn of events, I upgraded to 9.3.2, no more jailbreak but somehow, I didn't lose any data or photos, which is a lifesaver, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw all my pics show up. So it's not all bad, just not sure how on earth that's even possible.
 
Update on a jailbroaken phone? Hmmmm, than you were extremely lucky if it updated properly :)
With simple update, nothing is deleted, so I guess that is why you still have all the data and photos on the phone.
 
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Applejuiced said:
Updating a jb iPhone is a very bad idea.
Lots of software bugs and many other issues will surface.
I suggest you backup first and then restore with iTunes.
Click to expand...
AJ is right.

You won't think so until you go to jailbreak again at some point and realize that you cannot install any tweaks because pieces of your last jailbreak are still there.

Happened to more than one person going from iOS 8 to iOS 9. Unfortunately for them they only found that out after Apple stopped signing a jailbreakable firmware. It meant losing their jailbreak entirely because they were forced to restore.
 
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