Restore/update problems with iPhone 5s
May 9, 2015 1:03 PM Subscribe
Asking for my partner: Not able to restore or update an iPhone 5s on iTunes without getting repeated error messages which cancel the update/restoration. Please hope us!
Patner got a brand new iPhone 5s, which came with ios 8 installed.
It offered her an update to ios 8.3 - clicking the update crashed the phone, and it goes to a black screen which asks her to connect it to iTunes. It is not possible to switch on the iPhone.
On connecting to iTunes to restore, iTunes wants us to both install the update to 8.3 and restore the phone. When we press update and restore, it starts installing 8.3, which is 1.78GB. During that installation process, we are getting a series of error messages - one of them says that in order to install the update, you need to restore the phone, but we can't restore without updating. That error message can be closed, and the installation continues
We also get other error messages, and these stop the installation completely - the error message numbers have been 9006 and 1671.
Have tried this on two different computers (both PCs running XP - yes, I know), one with a fresh install of iTunes. Both have been failed in exactly the same way. I am wondering if the issue is our somewhat shonky rural broadband, so we might give it another try overnight.
In the meantime if any of you have any suggestions they would be much appreciated!
Patner got a brand new iPhone 5s, which came with ios 8 installed.
It offered her an update to ios 8.3 - clicking the update crashed the phone, and it goes to a black screen which asks her to connect it to iTunes. It is not possible to switch on the iPhone.
On connecting to iTunes to restore, iTunes wants us to both install the update to 8.3 and restore the phone. When we press update and restore, it starts installing 8.3, which is 1.78GB. During that installation process, we are getting a series of error messages - one of them says that in order to install the update, you need to restore the phone, but we can't restore without updating. That error message can be closed, and the installation continues
We also get other error messages, and these stop the installation completely - the error message numbers have been 9006 and 1671.
Have tried this on two different computers (both PCs running XP - yes, I know), one with a fresh install of iTunes. Both have been failed in exactly the same way. I am wondering if the issue is our somewhat shonky rural broadband, so we might give it another try overnight.
In the meantime if any of you have any suggestions they would be much appreciated!
Response by poster: Not to threadsit, but just to clarify, it's a brand new phone so we're pretty sure that it can't be full, we have put it into iTunes to restore it and the problem that we're having is with the restore process on iTunes.
posted by Chairboy at 2:30 PM on May 9, 2015
posted by Chairboy at 2:30 PM on May 9, 2015
Try this, if you haven't...
DFU Mode:
Plug your device into your computer with a USB cable.
Turn off the device.
Hold the Power button for 3 seconds.
Hold the Home and Power buttons for 10 seconds.
Release the Power button but keep holding the Home button.
posted by Huck500 at 2:38 PM on May 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
DFU Mode:
Plug your device into your computer with a USB cable.
Turn off the device.
Hold the Power button for 3 seconds.
Hold the Home and Power buttons for 10 seconds.
Release the Power button but keep holding the Home button.
posted by Huck500 at 2:38 PM on May 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Did you purchase the phone online or at a store? Can you just return it?
posted by Grumpy old geek at 2:58 PM on May 9, 2015
posted by Grumpy old geek at 2:58 PM on May 9, 2015
Best answer: 1. Directly download the ipsw for your model phone. The Verizon 5S is "iPhone 5s GSM+CDMA" all other 5s are "iPhone 5s GSM" You can only restore the newest iOS version (currently 8.3).
2. Put your phone into DFU mode as suggested by Huck500 above.
3. iTunes will pop up with "iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode. You must restore this iPhone before it can be used with iTunes."
4. Now Shift+Click on the Restore button and select the ipsw file you downloaded earlier.
I've run into this before where iTunes or the phone have a partial or corrupted download of the ipsw file, but assumes it's valid and tries to use it over and over again.
posted by notpeter at 7:00 PM on May 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
2. Put your phone into DFU mode as suggested by Huck500 above.
3. iTunes will pop up with "iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode. You must restore this iPhone before it can be used with iTunes."
4. Now Shift+Click on the Restore button and select the ipsw file you downloaded earlier.
I've run into this before where iTunes or the phone have a partial or corrupted download of the ipsw file, but assumes it's valid and tries to use it over and over again.
posted by notpeter at 7:00 PM on May 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
Yep DFU mode and set-up as a new phone.
posted by Mac-Expert at 7:02 PM on May 9, 2015
posted by Mac-Expert at 7:02 PM on May 9, 2015
Best answer: In addition to what's suggested above, i've run in to issues where itunes can't unzip the IPSW/update file, since it unzips to >2gb in addition to the almost 2gb already taken up if you have an almost full drive, or for some reason it otherwise can't, and then it throws random unrelated errors instead of just saying "hey we can't do this because you're out of space/the file can't be written" like it should. Pretty much just make sure you're not out of space and that you're using an administrator account on windows with no stupid restrictions on the size of my documents or anything.
Also this is really dumb but, do you know anyone with/have access to a mac? I've instantly restored phones/other iOS devices that errored out over and over on a PC on one of my macs and can only really chalk it up to apple controlling the whole stack driver/software wise.
It's also quite possible the phone was screwed up irreparably, at least with software and equipment you can use at home, by this update. I've heard about that happening occasionally since 8.0 came out. You might need to take it to an apple store or mail it in to apple to exchange. I've definitely told people to just go to the apple store with issues like this more than once.
posted by emptythought at 8:16 PM on May 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Also this is really dumb but, do you know anyone with/have access to a mac? I've instantly restored phones/other iOS devices that errored out over and over on a PC on one of my macs and can only really chalk it up to apple controlling the whole stack driver/software wise.
It's also quite possible the phone was screwed up irreparably, at least with software and equipment you can use at home, by this update. I've heard about that happening occasionally since 8.0 came out. You might need to take it to an apple store or mail it in to apple to exchange. I've definitely told people to just go to the apple store with issues like this more than once.
posted by emptythought at 8:16 PM on May 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Update the laptop or home machine in every way before trying again. This has always been a problem when updating for me.
posted by Riverine at 9:39 PM on May 9, 2015
posted by Riverine at 9:39 PM on May 9, 2015
Response by poster: Thanks for your suggestions. I think we'll try going down the route of pre-downloading the IPSW so I'll post an update as to whether that worked later on. It's also good to know that this may well be a 'back to base' issue. We were starting to suspect as much.
posted by Chairboy at 12:01 AM on May 10, 2015
posted by Chairboy at 12:01 AM on May 10, 2015
Response by poster: Final update: after all that, partner decided to give it one last try early this (sunday) morning and it worked fine! The download came down in 38 minutes as opposed to the 5-7 hours it was saying it would take before, so it looks like bandwidth/connectivity was the major underlying issue. Once again, thanks for all your suggestions!
posted by Chairboy at 12:49 AM on May 10, 2015
posted by Chairboy at 12:49 AM on May 10, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
Your iPhone is almost full and doesn't' have enough space to download and unpack the update. So you need to do it trough iTunes on your computer.
iTunes will download the update, back-up your iPhone, erase the phone, install the updated software and put your data back in place.
If your iPhone is completely locked up you need to connect it to iTunes and do a reset to factory settings and restore from back-up. Hopefully you have a recent back-up in iTunes and / or are you are using the iCloud back-up.
posted by Mac-Expert at 1:54 PM on May 9, 2015