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greenmagic

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 19, 2014
16
0
I have a iPhone 4 GSM that I jailbroke a year ago with redsn0w keeping the same iOS 5.1.1, installed Cydia and was running phone on T Mo for about a year with no problems.
My phone died mid call with about 82 % battery life, and I verified that later. Screen went black and nothing. Phone will do nothing no matter what buttons I press on it's own.

However, if I plug the phone into a Mac or PC the phone goes into an ongoing boot loop. It will auto try to power up, show Apple Boot Icon for 2-8 seconds at most, then die, and repeat over and over.

If I plug it into a wall outlet / AC the phone can go beyond that and into the Configure screen. I can not make emergency calls at all with SIM, and can't do that trick to bypass the screen either (dial, end call, power off button, hit no, resume call etc... maybe that's only 4S phones anyway).
I can power phone off and go to "plug into iTunes" screen and that's it.

It is possible to put phone into Recovery mode in iTunes tethered to mac or pc but that's all.

I want to get phone into DFU mode so I can use redsn0w to try to "just boot" tethered and if it wont then reinstall any iOS and preserve my data. If I could get to a home screen I could SSH out all the photos etc... but I cannot get there past the Configure screen.
I cannot get phone to enter DFU mode. No trouble getting iPhone 3 into DFU as experiment. Swapping currently valid AT&T SIM into phone makes no difference, and my T Mo SIM card is currently valid and working (and now in that iPhone 3G phone as I could not continue to have no phone after 11 days).

I've tried changing the timing on the DFU button sequence: power, then power and home buttons together, and then just home button. 3 sec, 10 sec, 15+ sec is normal for that, but that and any timing change (+/-) won't work. I've tried booting with volume button on trick, booting with volume up on original headset trick too.
My home and power buttons and volume all work perfectly.
I've probably spent 5 days searching online for a solution and trying them to no avail.
One thing I did do about a month before this happened was install through Cydia a 3rd party bootloader app to have a custom boot icon on startup. It was installed and gave me options to select pictures etc... and in the settings I stipulated to run the bootloader, but it never worked. Always the apple icon booting. I regret installing this, and suspect this is causing all my trouble.

After 10 days of phone hell and no phone, 100+ DFU attempts, 2 mac PPC models, 2 PC XP machines, 5 apple cables, 10 USB ports I threw the phone into my fridge I was so angry. No matter, the phone performs exactly the same as it did before, no change. I was contemplating smashing the phone to bits with a hammer next, but swapping back to a 3G and having my phone service back did wonders to calm me down.

Understand there is a big difference between DFU and Recovery mode if posting response. I have no interest in Recovery mode and Restore through iTunes (that will wipe out my phone and all data). I need to get my data off the phone. If I could either bypass configure screen to home screen I could perhaps SSH into phone and copy off all my photos - that is assuming the iOS / phone is as it was somewhat and Cydia is still running. I had SSH easily working into phone before.
Also if I can enter DFU mode I can use redn0w to again install any iOS and keep the old data, re-boot and copy off all my stuff and then do a recovery / restore.

Thank you for any advice about what's wrong, if anyone has seen this problem or any suggestions!

(I don't back up data on this phone - I can't thanks to apple constraints (I only have older PPC Macs I use, and I travel all the time, and am only allowed to backup to one computer - thanks Apple.)
 
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