2.0.2 update bricked my iphone 3G

[oftheheavens]

Before anyone asks no my phone was not jailbroke. I went to update my phone and i got an "error(9) this phone must be restored, bla bla bla" So i tried restoring it and got "error (9) this phone can not be restored" so ummmm WHAT THE HECK!! I am stationed in Japan right now so i cant walk into the store and try to explain that it is brick, they will look at me crazy. Anyways anyone else seen this error? I am on the phone waiting for apple to decide that they wanna answer.

 

[bbplayer5]

turn your phone off... press and hold the HOME button and the POWER button. When your Apple logo appears, let go of the POWER button, but continue to hold home until iTunes sees it in recovery mode.

Restore again.

 

[oftheheavens]

turn your phone off... press and hold the HOME button and the POWER button. When your Apple logo appears, let go of the POWER button, but continue to hold home until iTunes sees it in recovery mode.

Restore again.

it is already in recovery mode though and itunes sees it as such..? the way that you described how to turn off and reboot is called something like DHF mode or something right?

 

[Inukami]

Hey man i got the same problem and i called apple support and they helped me out. I tried to restore at least 7 times and on 2 computers but nothing worked.

Here is what you do:
Hold the sleep/wake button and the home button until the iPhone turns off(15 seconds estimate), don't let go when you see it turn off and back on, wait till its completely off. After that try to restore again and it should work. You have to do a hard reset.

 

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Aloha oftheheavens,

Did you restore to a backup or set up as a new phone? There could be corruption in your backup file. Restoring to (setting up as) a new phone simply starts you off from scratch. You'll have to resync everything manually (check the boxes and such). It's a PITA, but if it gets your iPhone to work .....

HawaiiMacAddict

P.S. Are you in the Navy? I finally retired in 2004 after 22 years in uniform. I never got stationed in Japan, but had to go there a couple of times to "catch a ride" hehehe

 

[oftheheavens]

Aloha oftheheavens,

Did you restore to a backup or set up as a new phone? There could be corruption in your backup file. Restoring to (setting up as) a new phone simply starts you off from scratch. You'll have to resync everything manually (check the boxes and such). It's a PITA, but if it gets your iPhone to work .....

HawaiiMacAddict

P.S. Are you in the Navy? I finally retired in 2004 after 22 years in uniform. I never got stationed in Japan, but had to go there a couple of times to "catch a ride" hehehe

well first of i guess, i am a Marine stationed out here and have caught a few rides from you guys before

now i read on the apple forums that if you change the usb port that you are using this could fix it and it did, i got it to restore and update, but then when the restore started i got the corrupt backup file message.....So pretty much the hour i spent before updating to backup was pointless, so now i am (trying to) updating from 08/05/08 and seeing if that works. The apple guy that i talked to said that i probably have a defective phone. He also mentioned that he has been talking to A LOT of people that they have run tests over the phone with, and have been told that they have a hardware problem and to take it to an apple store. He told me the same thing since i have never seen more than 1bar of 3G. Here in Japan we don't have edge to revert to so it kinda sucks. The closest apple store is in Tokyo which is about 6 hours and 400$ in tolls away. So i think i am screwed. well i hope that the restore is taking this long because it is working.

 

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Semper Fi oftheheavens,

At least you're Department of the Navy hehehe

If that restore from a backup doesn't work, I would suggest that you try to set it up as a new phone. You'll have to manually set up all of your content for syncing (check the boxes in the iPhone section), but it may work. I forgot that Japan doesn't have EDGE, so yes, that must suck. Have you compared your 3G availability (number of bars) against someone with a different cell phone? If other people are consistently getting more bars than you, then you may indeed have a defective iPhone. It sounds as if it may actually be cheaper to fly to Tokyo than to drive hehehe If I were you, I would seriously consider taking the trip if this restore continues to fail.

HawaiiMacAddict

 

[Inukami]

waaa.... you're stationed in Japan? I would so join the navy/marine if they allowed me to be stationed wherever i wanted.

 

[oftheheavens]

waaa.... you're stationed in Japan? I would so join the navy/marine if they allowed me to be stationed wherever i wanted.

well first off if you join the Marines you join the hardest branch (physically) but you choices of where you go are limited. Join the AF if you wanna be able to go wherever you want, and you don't wanna work hard.

 

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Aloha Inukami,

There's just one more thing, though. While the Air Force has some extremely good-looking women in uniform, it still must be kind of hard when you say "I'm in the Air Force" and everyone start laughing hehehe j/k

HawaiiMacAddict

 

[rmcreative]

solved the issue

I had the exact same problem with my iPhone - same error message telling me my iPhone needed to be restored.

Needless to say, I was quite annoyed so proceeded with the restore and then got the same error message telling me my phone couldn't be restored!

I tried hard resetting, restarting iTunes, etc. and the same iTunes cable screen just kept showing up on my iPhone but then iTunes refused to restore it.

I did some Google searches and read somewhere to keep trying (it might've even been here), and so I did.

After about the third or fourth time, it just started to restore for some reason.

Once it was restored, I was able to set up my iPhone using the latest backup file.

After that was done, I thought, ah-ha, at least that has been solved.

But then iTunes refused to realised that my iPhone had already been restored and set up, and it kept wanting to restore it again and again.

So I restarted computer, re-installed iTunes (which didn't seem to do anything) and then went to 'Syncing' under iTunes preferences and deleted the back up files they had there.

That seemed to do the trick and everything started to work as normal again. Of course, I still had to set up mail accounts on iPhone again but that wasn't too much trouble. iPhone also seems to forget where all your app icons go so that was all over the place as well.

Just to be sure, I synced my iPhone first thing this morning to make sure iTunes has a back up copy of my phone once again....

 

[andyblila]

Plug the iPhone into the computer directly. USB hubs cause these problems.