iPhone 4, iOS 5.1.1 stuck boot loop. Cannot enter DFU mode!

I think i posted this in wrong forum before.

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.)

 

I still have this problem. No fix.
900 views and not one reply??

 

So many views. No advice.

I got phone into DFU mode finally. But could only accomplish this using a newer Intel Mac and trying many times.
Tried to re run Redsn0w on it, several versions.
It did the "exploiting with Limera1n" and ultimately failed when it tries to re boot. Same damn boot loop. Boot icon for 2-5 seconds, phone dies, and over and over it tries to reboot until I unplug phone or quit Redsn0w app.

No cure
I tried something else.
And next, if I can find it anywhere, may use iBeej tool, something like ibeejsn0w if its still around. Apparently that and another tool he made solved a lot of people's phones and saved a lot of data.
He's on modmyi forum, probably a better forum to look for help with older phones.

 

There are other complicated somewhat ways or simpler to save a phone like this.
If anyone is reading this thread don't restore thru iTunes or you'll lose all your data.
There are open source hacks out there to make phone useable, although so far in my case they haven't been able to finish the whole process and boot the phone.

 

I feel it shouldn't have gotten this complicated.
I have tried many times with redsn0w to re jailbreak it.
I then used a tool from msftguy. http://msftguy.blogspot.com/2012/01/automatic-ssh-ramdisk-creation-and.html
An automatic RAM disk tool.
It failed several times but then I got it to near the final step "almost done" and then it boot loops again same thing. It just won't boot fully past the apple logo.

Bear in mind:
Beyond the initial jailbreak and Cydia install I never installed an app on the phone that I can recall, save that one bootloader image app.
And the phone died mid call on a near full charge. It wasnt like I was doing anything special or controversial at the time.

It doesn't seem possible to save out the blobs with any of the tools I've used. I've tried tinyumbrella on a PC and it won't work, and another app as well.

Next, I may try Absinthe in case.
I have many pics on the phone - in the hundreds I'd like to not permanently erase. I've done a lot of semi to quite complex data recovery on regular Mac computers. I don't like losing data if something went kerfluey. It is easier for me to understand a traditional Mac hard drive than the iphone. And I'm sure that because yes its a different device Im not as experienced with and also due to Apples ridiculous control over the device.

And this post was dead for over a month, so after awhile you stop checking for responses. You know?

 

Thats the old tired response. I hate to say but it is.
This is a legitimate problem that happens to a lot of people. How they all got there is basically irrelevant. Back up suggestions are great suggestions to avoid future (repeat) problems, but do nothing to solve what a lot of original posters post they would like help with.

But anyway, here this phone is.
And it's not phone I want to erase to simply do it the apple way or recommended easy way.
I've done a number of digital recovery things that pretty much everyone said couldn't be done, some with help of another person.
It seems there are a lot of people navigating to this post, so I presume it must also affect other browsing Internet people.

And erasing to iOS 7 as the only alternative is completely false.

 

Hi September. Thanks for suggestion.
That's one way to solve a problem like this. However from what I understand you need to have a more recent version of something installed thru Cydia to have a safe mobile substrate boot option. I only learned of this newer protection after my phone tanked. So that could normally disable a bunch of potentially problematic things on start up, but sadly it doesn't work with my phone (tried that and even the holding volume up button on startup on stock headset, which is another method of doing the same thing). It could help someone else reading this post though so thanks.

Rayerhak, thanks for response! The msftguy code won't finish completely on my phone. It hangs at "almost done" comment and never finishes.
I also leave my phone wifi and Bluetooth off by default to save battery life, and only turn it on to do m own manually push / pull of photos and video.


And to a few others, on the one hand it "could" be useful advice, on the other its tiring to chime in about back ups etc...
If you spend time browsing the Internet this problem happens to people all the time. And there's always people chiming in about back ups. Does this address the initial posters question or further aid them with the current problem? (I'll be obvious and state that's rhetorical. So enough with it. We've all read those same posts elsewhere.).


Thanks to numerous factors - almost all directly attributable to Apples f$$&ing annoying control freakishness, I CANNOT back up this phone w iTunes, when it was working normally before. So my only option has been manually saving off photos etc through an SSH or SFTP client sporadically.


Blueroom: my objective is recover photos essentially. I could care less about new iOS or really much about the phone itself. I'd buy a new one under contract if it comes to that. (For current use, I'm suffering through an Apple forced iOS 4.1.1 on a 3G phone - thanks for crippling older iPhones Apple btw.)