Sick of my phone getting stuck at the boot up screen

[anirudh]

This is happening for the second time with me. First time was while installing Videostone and the second time now is while I was trying to uninstall Appstore Patch for 2.0/2.01. The installation stopped suddenly and the screen froze on the spinning wheel on both instances. Then while I tried to hard boot the phone (pressed the sleep/wake button and home button till the iphone switches off) the phone just refuses to start at gets stuck on the boot-up logo.

I again have to pwn using a custom firmware and I end up loosing all my data. I am sick of this and need to know whats happening.

 

[fireshot91]

Apple Logo of Death. Can't do anything about it but learn to live with it, or not jailbreak/unlock.

 

[anirudh]

hmmm... But it never happened to me when I was on my 2.5G iPhone. Guess it comes as an added bonus with the 3G

 

[Lixivial]

Apple Logo of Death. Can't do anything about it but learn to live with it, or not jailbreak/unlock.

No. You needn't "live with it." Before 2.1 it had nothing at all to do with jailbreaking/unlocking. It was a flaw in the installation cache -- rebooting in the middle of app installation -- and being that App Store installs would routinely lock up the phone (due to another flaw in the installation process -- unable to utilise permissions properly) it was quite easy to get yourself into the mess. Sometimes a sync with iTunes would fix it, due to iTunes wrapping up the installation procedure, but it'd never clear out the installation cache.

The fix I always used required jailbreaking, and that was to clear the installation cache.

All that aside, it results from SpringBoard constantly crashing. This can be caused for a number of reasons, but it usually has to do with attempting to regenerate the app list, while trying to install from the cache. Typically other services will have started (including SSH), so you can connect to the phone before watchdog kills the SpringBoard process entirely (though you can disable that, too). In debugging these things, syslog is your friend wholeheartedly.

Also, anything that says "Patch" is something I usually stay well away from. It's a stupid risk for a device that *needs* a high level of reliability and 100% confidence.

 

[anirudh]

so apart from trying to sync with iTunes n 'staying away from patches' what else do I keep in mind to avoid such situations? Will upgrading to 2.1 help in any way?