iPad randomly entered DFU mode.

[super!]

Hi all,

So here I was, lying on the couch, browsing Ryman's website for a file cabinet when Safari crashed/closed. After restarting Safari, again it crashed/closed. So I decided to restart the iPad, held the top bottom, slid the slider to turn off. I then pressed the power button, and then I was welcomed with the USB > iTunes image. So I connected it to iTunes and was notified that the iPad was in recovery mode; only it must be in DFU mode since a simple press hold/home reset does not get the iPad into 'normal' mode.

I had the latest iPad software on it and the last time I backed up was a few days ago, and since I've used it quite a lot and cannot afford to lose my data. I've absolutely no idea what to do now; I've done a lot of searching for how to get out of DFU mode but they all seem to relate to Recovery mode rather than the DFU.

This is crazy! How can the device just suddenly 'go' into DFU mode?

 

[Night Spring]

When you have the "connect to iTunes" picture on your screen, that's recovery mode, not DFU mode. In DFU mode, the iPad screen is black. When an iDevice suddenly goes into recovery mode in the way you describe, it's because something got corrupted in the system. The only way to fix this is to restore. Well, you can search for and download this program called TinyUmbrella and see if it'll kick your iPad out of recovery mode, but the way you describe what happened, I doubt your iPad is in a state where it's recoverable by TinyUmbrella. If TU doesn't work, then unfortunately, there's no way to recover any data you've inputted since your last backup. I've had this happen to me once, and ever since, I religiously backup at least once a day to minimize data loss in case it happens.