Is it necessary to reset to factory settings before jailbreaking?

[mstruve]

Hi, I'm about to jailbreak my iPhone 4s running 5.1.1 using the latest Absinthe.

The guide says that I should reset all settings and data before jailbreaking and then restore afterwards.

Is it really necessary to do this? I have 25GB data on there and don't really want to have to restore everything if I can avoid it. Can I not just jailbreak it as it is or will this cause problems?

Thanks for any help. Apologies if this has been answered before.

 

[jpbl1976]

Hi, I'm about to jailbreak my iPhone 4s running 5.1.1 using the latest Absinthe.

The guide says that I should reset all settings and data before jailbreaking and then restore afterwards.

Is it really necessary to do this? I have 25GB data on there and don't really want to have to restore everything if I can avoid it. Can I not just jailbreak it as it is or will this cause problems?

Thanks for any help. Apologies if this has been answered before.

No. You don't have to. I didn't do it on my iPhone 4s and I was able to jailbreak fine. It just makes the process easier.

 

[ZCherub]

I really wish they would remove this from the guide. There have been a lot of issues being posted about here in the last few days due to people doing it. Doing this is ALWAYS a bad idea on a jailbroken iDevice...

 

[Pillar]

I didn't on 2 devices and the jailbreak went good and fast. No issues here

 

[wes-]

Hi, I'm about to jailbreak my iPhone 4s running 5.1.1 using the latest Absinthe.

The guide says that I should reset all settings and data before jailbreaking and then restore afterwards.

Is it really necessary to do this? I have 25GB data on there and don't really want to have to restore everything if I can avoid it. Can I not just jailbreak it as it is or will this cause problems?

Thanks for any help. Apologies if this has been answered before.

I did the jailbreak without restoring and experienced performance issues and weird crashes with Safari and Jetpack would not even start, opening folders went noticeably slower. I tried again with a restore and not i have no problems.

 

[mstruve]

Thanks all, just what I was hoping to hear.

I agree they should remove it from the guide (or at least make clear that it's optional) if it's not absolutely necessary.

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I did the jailbreak without restoring and experienced performance issues and weird crashes with Safari and Jetpack would not even start, opening folders went noticeably slower. I tried again with a restore and not i have no problems.

If this is the case then I'll just restore from my 5.1.1 backup and live with it unjailbroken. Resetting and restoring from backup is just more hassle than it's worth.

 

[TriJetHero]

Thanks all, just what I was hoping to hear.

I agree they should remove it from the guide (or at least make clear that it's optional) if it's not absolutely necessary.

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If this is the case then I'll just restore from my 5.1.1 backup and live with it unjailbroken. Resetting and restoring from backup is just more hassle than it's worth.

Reading what you want to read!

Bringing it back to clean status is wise.
Absinthe uses the backup/restore function from itunes, if you have a lot of data on your phone you might run into problems.

I wish they would put that in the guide.

 

[BumpyFlatline]

My 4S was on 5.1.1 with all my app store apps and everything else that builds up on stock devices. I backed up my phone just to be safe in case I ran into problems. I downloaded absinthe, connected my 4S, ran absinthe and didn't have a single problem! I'm jailbroken without any issues. I did this with the first version of absinthe...2.0.

I assume the suggestion of resetting the phone is for phones that were already jailbroken on 5.0.1. I don't see why someone would have to reset their phone if it was never jailbroken in the first place.

Since I jailbroke my 4S on Friday, I've jailbroken 4 other phones for friends and family and none of them have had any issues either. Only issues they've run into was incompatible tweaks installed via cydia.

 

[mstruve]

Reading what you want to read!

Bringing it back to clean status is wise.
Absinthe uses the backup/restore function from itunes, if you have a lot of data on your phone you might run into problems.

I wish they would put that in the guide.

Ha, perhaps!

Thanks for the tip, I think I will try it without resetting first and see what happens.

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I assume the suggestion of resetting the phone is for phones that were already jailbroken on 5.0.1. I don't see why someone would have to reset their phone if it was never jailbroken in the first place.

I'm sure I read somewhere that if the phone is already jailbroken, then you specifically DO NOT need to do the factory reset.

Sounds like you had no issues though, will give it a go.

 

[BumpyFlatline]

Ha, perhaps!

Thanks for the tip, I think I will try it without resetting first and see what happens.

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I'm sure I read somewhere that if the phone is already jailbroken, then you specifically DO NOT need to do the factory reset.

Sounds like you had no issues though, will give it a go.

FYI I didn't blindly perform the jailbreak this way without researching first. Obviously I read the same instructions as everyone else on the greenpoison site. Right after I downloaded absinthe I went over to my trusted source, idownloadblog, and followed the step by step how to guide. It said make sure you're on 5.1.1, backup your phone just in case, then run absinthe. Oh and one other thing. I updated my phone via the OTA a week before the jailbreak was released. My intention was to do a clean restore via iTunes prior to jailbreaking but I said what the heck, I'll give this a shot following idownloadblog's guide. I was eager to jailbreak and didn't feel like waiting until i got home from work to restore via itunes. I might just be lucky but it's been smooth sailing ever since. One other thing, in one of the threads someone said that its important to make sure your computer's hardrive has a lot of free space because the jailbreak transfers a lot of data from the phone to the computer, then back to the phone. I have no clue if thats true. Good luck and let us know how you make out or if you need help.

 

[mstruve]

Thanks BumpyFlatline. I ran Absinthe 2.0.4 without resetting and it seems to have worked fine. Left it running and when I came back 10 minutes later it was all done.

Spent the last hour or so reinstalling all my favourite jailbreak apps and tweaks and not had any issues yet.

So yeah, from my experience, there's no need to do a factory reset if you're not already jailbroken.

 

[BumpyFlatline]

Thanks BumpyFlatline. I ran Absinthe 2.0.4 without resetting and it seems to have worked fine. Left it running and when I came back 10 minutes later it was all done.

Spent the last hour or so reinstalling all my favourite jailbreak apps and tweaks and not had any issues yet.

So yeah, from my experience, there's no need to do a factory reset if you're not already jailbroken.

Awesome! Glad I could help. Have fun!

 

[mrsir2009]

Hi, I'm about to jailbreak my iPhone 4s running 5.1.1 using the latest Absinthe.

The guide says that I should reset all settings and data before jailbreaking and then restore afterwards.

Is it really necessary to do this? I have 25GB data on there and don't really want to have to restore everything if I can avoid it. Can I not just jailbreak it as it is or will this cause problems?

Thanks for any help. Apologies if this has been answered before.

I jailbroke an iPhone 4S running 5.1.1 with Absinthe and it worked fine without resetting anything.

 

[audiski]

problems

Has anyone had a problem downloading the new jailbreak?
i have tried to do this several times and it gets to the "sending initial jailbreak data" then it crashes or says it can not log in to it. I just read previously that it is not nessasary to reset entire phone. what should i do?