Without using a restore..
I was unable to find any help on this anywhere, and wanted to let others know how I fixed it..
While installing Cydia, I lost internet connection during the first time I opened Cydia and it was updating itself. It crashed, bounced itself and when the phone turned back on, all my standard Icons were gone, and nothing could get them back, I couldnt restore, I couldnt roll back, I couldnt update, nothing worked.
I did have Cydia installed though and there were a couple of folders left, but no access to settings, or app store or anything, only notes and news remained.
So I installed OpenSSH
Then because I didnt have any settings icon, I installed SBsettings, so I could extract the IP information to SSH into the phone, and enabled wifi from SBSettings.
Then used iExplorer to get access to the file structure.
I found that most of the .app folders within \Applications\ were missing
I took another working iphone and accessed it via iExplorer and copied all the folders from the \Applications\ folder to my PC
Then I connected the damaged iPhone to my PC and connected to it via SSH using Wifi.
Next I copied all the missing folders, and pretty much bricked the phone. I thought I was stuffed. It would not boot at all.
But I still had access to the files with iExplorer, and managed to delete only the folders I had uploaded and started again. The phone powered up again, good stuff.
So then I found this fix..
I copied one folder at a time, from your PC backup to your broken iphone into the /Applications folder, using iExplorer, for example..
/Applications/Preferences.app
Then from SSH ..
cd \Applications
chmod 755 Preferences* -Rf
chgrp wheel Preferences* -Rf
Now the settings icon should reappear on your home.
Test it one folder at a time, because if the permissions and ownership are off, it can crash your phone, or if there is a damaged app in there, then you can use iexplore or SSH to remove the folder and get it to boot up again.
Eventually you will restore all the icons.
I was unable to find any help on this anywhere, and wanted to let others know how I fixed it..
While installing Cydia, I lost internet connection during the first time I opened Cydia and it was updating itself. It crashed, bounced itself and when the phone turned back on, all my standard Icons were gone, and nothing could get them back, I couldnt restore, I couldnt roll back, I couldnt update, nothing worked.
I did have Cydia installed though and there were a couple of folders left, but no access to settings, or app store or anything, only notes and news remained.
So I installed OpenSSH
Then because I didnt have any settings icon, I installed SBsettings, so I could extract the IP information to SSH into the phone, and enabled wifi from SBSettings.
Then used iExplorer to get access to the file structure.
I found that most of the .app folders within \Applications\ were missing
I took another working iphone and accessed it via iExplorer and copied all the folders from the \Applications\ folder to my PC
Then I connected the damaged iPhone to my PC and connected to it via SSH using Wifi.
Next I copied all the missing folders, and pretty much bricked the phone. I thought I was stuffed. It would not boot at all.
But I still had access to the files with iExplorer, and managed to delete only the folders I had uploaded and started again. The phone powered up again, good stuff.
So then I found this fix..
I copied one folder at a time, from your PC backup to your broken iphone into the /Applications folder, using iExplorer, for example..
/Applications/Preferences.app
Then from SSH ..
cd \Applications
chmod 755 Preferences* -Rf
chgrp wheel Preferences* -Rf
Now the settings icon should reappear on your home.
Test it one folder at a time, because if the permissions and ownership are off, it can crash your phone, or if there is a damaged app in there, then you can use iexplore or SSH to remove the folder and get it to boot up again.
Eventually you will restore all the icons.
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