iOS 4.2.1 update lost all my text messages

eriknba · Nov 22, 2010

well pretty much as the title says, i did the 4.2.1 update this morning. i have 2 iphone 4's, one for work, one for personal use. i did both one after the other, no problems. but afterwards, i find that on my personal iphone, all my text messages are gone. completely.

i tried looking through the saved backups, but it seems that my backup that i did just before my upgrade got overwritten by the backup after the upgrade.

any ideas?

Mac'nCheese · Nov 22, 2010

eriknba said:
well pretty much as the title says, i did the 4.2.1 update this morning. i have 2 iphone 4's, one for work, one for personal use. i did both one after the other, no problems. but afterwards, i find that on my personal iphone, all my text messages are gone. completely.

i tried looking through the saved backups, but it seems that my backup that i did just before my upgrade got overwritten by the backup after the upgrade.

any ideas?

did you do a time machine backup after the first iphone backup before you upgraded? can you find the old text messages there?

eriknba · Nov 22, 2010

stevensteven123 said:
did you do a time machine backup after the first iphone backup before you upgraded? can you find the old text messages there?

no. i do intermittent time machine backups on an external drive. i looked through the backups folder and looked at all the versions of the text message file, but it seems like i have several versions, but i can't read the files that well. is there any programs out there that can interpret the files a little better?

EDIT: that did remind me of the backup i made last friday though. i'm going to see if i can at least salvage what i can from that backup....

iqwertyi · Nov 25, 2010

Did you ever get your texts back?
Just updated to 4.2.1

Originally, my texts were there but my music in the iPod app were all missing.
Then I read adding a song will bring it back, which I did and it worked.

Now, I just realized that all my texts are gone.
I'm going to try and restoring from backup.
Just wondering if you were successful.

iqwertyi · Nov 25, 2010

Well this is stupid.

So, last night I updated the phone, before doing so, I backed up.
Today, lost all my text, so I wanted to restore from last night's backup.
Well, before starting the restore, it backed up the phone. And when it finally went to setting up from a restore point, it doesn't show last nights backup. Only the one created right before I started the restore!

Restoring now...
I've got a feeling I lost all my texts.

eriknba · Nov 25, 2010

i'm glad i'm not the only one! (sorry if that sounds harsh)

so you lost your texts instantaneously? or after abit? i've done some more troubleshooting, and i've found that using my backup, running 4.2.1, as soon as i receive a text, my phone reboots, and i lose all the texts.

if i run 4.1, from one of my backups, its fine, no issues.

i've tried several different backups, same issue. i've already contacted apple tier 2 about this, we'll see if they have any bright ideas....

(don't you just LOVE how itunes tries to save space by overwriting your most recent backup???)

chargit · Nov 25, 2010

this idea wont help if you have already lost your info....well maybe it might. when you connect to iTunes click on your device name (mine is iFixiPhones) and change the name before you try to restore. so you old one is old name and then you back up and then your new one is new name and let it sync. then choose restore from backup and choose old name. I havent updated yet since there is no good solution yet on the JB/Unlock so I dont know if it will work but it should.

good luck!

eriknba · Nov 25, 2010

thats a good idea, and technically it would help with the backups being overwritten. i've resorted to manually backing up the mobilesync folder where the backups save. however i don't think renaming will fix the problem of the texts deleting on their own. my idea is that for some reason the 4.2.1 FW doesn't like something in the database when it tries to add to it from an incoming text, and so it deletes the database and starts fresh.

chargit · Nov 25, 2010

eriknba said:
thats a good idea, and technically it would help with the backups being overwritten. i've resorted to manually backing up the mobilesync folder where the backups save. however i don't think renaming will fix the problem of the texts deleting on their own. my idea is that for some reason the 4.2.1 FW doesn't like something in the database when it tries to add to it from an incoming text, and so it deletes the database and starts fresh.

your right its definately a problem with the 4.2.1 update but with my suggestion you should still have the old info if Apple or someone smarter than me can figure out how to fix the deleting issue then you can go back and get them. depending on your device you may be able to downgrade back to 4.1

eriknba · Nov 25, 2010

chargit said:
your right its definately a problem with the 4.2.1 update but with my suggestion you should still have the old info if Apple or someone smarter than me can figure out how to fix the deleting issue then you can go back and get them. depending on your device you may be able to downgrade back to 4.1

luckily i had done a timemachine backup the night before. i was able to get my original backups back, and tried several times with several backups with 4.2.1, none would be stable. so now i have downgraded to 4.1, using one of my recent backups, and its stable for the time being.

chargit · Nov 25, 2010

what is a timemachine backup?

eriknba · Nov 25, 2010

chargit said:
what is a timemachine backup?

It's the built-in macos backup utility. Takes snapshots of your drives pretty much... So I went back to my drive as of nov 21, was able to get the un-overwritten backups and use them

gh0001 · Nov 25, 2010

eriknba said:
It's the built-in macos backup utility. Takes snapshots of your drives pretty much... So I went back to my drive as of nov 21, was able to get the un-overwritten backups and use them

the feature is useful, save my ass when my wife's laptop had an issue last time

kaldemir · Nov 26, 2010

eriknba said:
i'm glad i'm not the only one! (sorry if that sounds harsh)

so you lost your texts instantaneously? or after abit? i've done some more troubleshooting, and i've found that using my backup, running 4.2.1, as soon as i receive a text, my phone reboots, and i lose all the texts.

if i run 4.1, from one of my backups, its fine, no issues.

i've tried several different backups, same issue. i've already contacted apple tier 2 about this, we'll see if they have any bright ideas....

(don't you just LOVE how itunes tries to save space by overwriting your most recent backup???)

had the same problem, tried various backups, texts got wiped off every time.. got sick of trying, went to the apple store, got a replacement phone and it works fine (for 6 hours now)

eriknba · Nov 26, 2010

kaldemir said:
had the same problem, tried various backups, texts got wiped off every time.. got sick of trying, went to the apple store, got a replacement phone and it works fine (for 6 hours now)

Wait hold the phone. (lol). So after you picked up a new phone, u were able to put 4.2.1 on, and then restore from your backup without issues??

kaldemir · Nov 28, 2010

eriknba said:
Wait hold the phone. (lol). So after you picked up a new phone, u were able to put 4.2.1 on, and then restore from your backup without issues??

Ooops.. Well I assumed that the iPhone I got from the Apple Store would have the latest software on it but apparently it doesn't. So I haven't put 4.2.1 on yet. I think I'll back my messages up with a 3rd party app before I do it.

When I was at the apple store I was first told that the reason of me losing the messages was that I had too many messages and it exceeded capacity - then I found an article on the apple website proving the genius wrong (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306427) - I have about 16,000 messages on the phone.
Next he told me that my backup could be corrupt and that that "might" be the reason. When I told him that he doesn't know what he's saying and just making up excuses he brought in a more senior member of staff who asked me what he can do to make me happy. I said that it would make me happy if he fixed my problem. He said he doesn't know what to do and all he can do is give me a new phone which solved my problem. happy now

Anyway if I get around to update my phone again I'll let you know what happened

eriknba · Nov 28, 2010

kaldemir said:
Ooops.. Well I assumed that the iPhone I got from the Apple Store would have the latest software on it but apparently it doesn't. So I haven't put 4.2.1 on yet. I think I'll back my messages up with a 3rd party app before I do it.

When I was at the apple store I was first told that the reason of me losing the messages was that I had too many messages and it exceeded capacity - then I found an article on the apple website proving the genius wrong (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306427) - I have about 16,000 messages on the phone.
Next he told me that my backup could be corrupt and that that "might" be the reason. When I told him that he doesn't know what he's saying and just making up excuses he brought in a more senior member of staff who asked me what he can do to make me happy. I said that it would make me happy if he fixed my problem. He said he doesn't know what to do and all he can do is give me a new phone which solved my problem. happy now

Anyway if I get around to update my phone again I'll let you know what happened

if you could update to 4.2.1 and try again, i would love to see if this porblem is re-occuring across multiple phones...

junjie · Dec 7, 2010

Just happened to me twice since 4.2.1. And they're not lost upon update, they just go missing all of a sudden. Haven't found many people with this problem yet, and no workarounds or solutions either.

eriknba · Dec 7, 2010

junjie said:
Just happened to me twice since 4.2.1. And they're not lost upon update, they just go missing all of a sudden. Haven't found many people with this problem yet, and no workarounds or solutions either.

i've found that they delete themselves after a spontaneous reboot of the phone. the reboot seems to be caused by an incoming text thats never received....

apple support has gone silent on this issue with me, telling me that in 2-3 days the engineers will come up with something from my logs. that was over 1.5 weeks ago

DiamondGCoupe · Dec 7, 2010

I have 4.2.1 installed and still have all text convos from the day I received my iP4 back in July.

eriknba · Dec 7, 2010

DiamondGCoupe said:
I have 4.2.1 installed and still have all text convos from the day I received my iP4 back in July.

i've got a work iphone 4 as well, and it was fine.

kasaka74 · Dec 9, 2010

Same

The same happens to me. And the funny thing is that I was able to restore and recover almost everything from a two-day-old backup and a few hours later, as you said, the phone did an unexpected and selfish reboot.
After it woke, all my SMS were gone.

Is downgrading the only solution for the moment? Didn't tried that yet.

Please, let's follow this up to see if we can find a solution...

Thanks
Nico

iPhone 4 (original, not jailbroken)
Fw 4.2.1
MacBook pro 13"

eriknba · Dec 9, 2010

kasaka74 said:
Is downgrading the only solution for the moment? Didn't tried that yet.

seems to be.....i was able to downgrade and restore from a backup, and i still have my texts...

joesgrille · Dec 10, 2010

text message app crashes then all disappear

I got a new iphone 4 yesterday to replace a different iphone 4 I had which was running 4.1. The new iphone came preloaded with 4.21. It worked fine yesterday, then when I went to sleep, I put it in airplane mode. When I woke up, and took it out of airplane mode, there was one new text. When I opened that text, the app crashed and all of my old texts disappeared. I have restored the phone and can text without it crashing, but as soon as I add my info and I go to send a text, the progress bar gets 2/3s of the way there and then the program crashes and all of my old texts disappear. The new text however, remains. I have tried with other back-ups that worked fine with iphones that had 4.1, but these crash on the 4.21 iphone as well. I know those back-ups are not corrupt as I have used them before without problems.

Since then I have talked to Apple multiple times (which gets more frustrating every year!). They tell me that there is nothing I can do and that I will just have to move on without my info. Really???? Is that why I just paid $700 for a "phone???"

So, I guess my big question is how do I downgrade my OS- Apple is refusing to help me. Other suggestions??
Thanks

eriknba · Dec 10, 2010

joesgrille said:
I got a new iphone 4 yesterday to replace a different iphone 4 I had which was running 4.1. The new iphone came preloaded with 4.21. It worked fine yesterday, then when I went to sleep, I put it in airplane mode. When I woke up, and took it out of airplane mode, there was one new text. When I opened that text, the app crashed and all of my old texts disappeared. I have restored the phone and can text without it crashing, but as soon as I add my info and I go to send a text, the progress bar gets 2/3s of the way there and then the program crashes and all of my old texts disappear. The new text however, remains. I have tried with other back-ups that worked fine with iphones that had 4.1, but these crash on the 4.21 iphone as well. I know those back-ups are not corrupt as I have used them before without problems.

Since then I have talked to Apple multiple times (which gets more frustrating every year!). They tell me that there is nothing I can do and that I will just have to move on without my info. Really???? Is that why I just paid $700 for a "phone???"

So, I guess my big question is how do I downgrade my OS- Apple is refusing to help me. Other suggestions??
Thanks

Welcome to the club.

I've been trying to deal with apple on this issue since I first posted this thread, with no further luck. They keep wanting me to try upgrading to 4.2.1 again, to see if it'll work, but the problem is I won't be able to downgrade again(this apple employee didn't know that apple unsigns dated FW's after a week or so. He said to try creating a new user on your machine, blah blah etc etc

SINCE you are already screwed (sorry, I do feel for you), I was wondering I'd you could try something for me. I've been reading about manually "hacking" the apple backup to including the SMS history. If I were to send you the information and walk you through the process, would you be able to try that for me? For us?

iOS 4.2.1 update lost all my text messages

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