Resolved iPhone 3G stuck in recovery mode (1015)

I have an iPhone 3G that is stuck in recovery mode.
When trying to do a factory reset through iTunes, it gives the following error:

The iPhone could not be updated. An unknown error occured (1015).

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I tried searching for this error but everything I can find seems related to jailbreaking and/or downgrading and most info is fairly outdated.

This iPhone is not jailbroken, nor do I plan to jailbreak it.
I'm not trying to downgrade it.
I don't have anything in my hosts file that souldn't be there.
I've tried letting iTunes restore automatically and I've tried manually restoring to a couple different IPSWs, including the latest.
I've tried various applications to "kick" it out of recovery mode.
Tried in Mac OS and Windows.
Nothing works. Same old 1015 every single time.

Ideas?

elpmas said:

What's your firmware?
What usually works for me is to restore with the same firmware then do a factory reset :/

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I actually thought of that. The problem is I have no idea.
Is there any way to check while it's still stuck in recovery mode loop?

Speaking of different versions; it refused to restore to some versions that I tried.

The iPhone could not be updated. An unknown error occured (1015).

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4.2.1
3.1.3
3.1.2
3.1.0
3.0.1
3.0.0

This device isn't eligible for the requested build.

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4.1
4.0.2
4.0.1
4.0

An unknown error occured (20).

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2.2.1
2.0.0

Alright, after testing every possible version (and then some) I think it's safe to assume it doesn't matter which version I try restoring to.

Any other ideas?

Bump.

rowley said:

I had one like this - I used recboot to take it out of recovery mode.
Maybe that will help with this issue.

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I've seen mentions of recboot in many places but it seems it's been taken offline.
You don't happen to know of a mirror?
TinyUmbrella and several other apps have failed to kick it out of recovery though.
Edit: Found a mirror. Run the app. Boots right back into recovery mode as usual.

assfeis said:

Does the screen appear all black?

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No. It's in recovery mode, so it shows the USB cable + iTunes logo.
I can, however, boot it into DFU mode (black screen) at will.

It makes no difference if I try to restore the iPhone from either mode, though.

Progress! On the 74th try, RecBoot finally managed to kick the phone out of recovery mode after restoring to 3.1.3.
But now I have a different problem. How do I proceed from here?
I've tried updating and restoring to the latest firmware, but any other version than 3.1.3 seems impossible to kick out of recovery mode.

So, how do I upgrade to the latest iOS without ending up in the endless loop?

rowley said:

It will need to do into that mode again to update.

The question is do you really need it updating to 4.2.1? A lot of the 4.x functions do not work on the 3g (extra camera functions, multitask etc)

Are you going to use it as a phone or as a internet device?

All music, and videos will run under 3.1.3, as will a lot of apps.

An added bonus its that 3.1.3 is very quick on the 3g, ios4.x did have a few foibles with 3g phones, and I know some of the people at work with old 3g phones did not update.

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I actually managed to get it to 4.1 eventually, and I stopped there.
Really don't agree about the speed though.
It's not my phone so I can't answer what it will be used for.
But the built in features such as SMS and Safari felt way faster in 4.1.

I've since return the phone to its owner and he's happy with 4.1 so you can consider this topic solved.
Thanks to everyone who helped.