Problems upgrading wife's iPad

[emieczko]

I bought an iPad Air, WiFi, 32Gb as a B-Day gift for my wife. It'll be replacing her 1st gen iPad, which is running iOS 4.3.5.

I've intentionally left her on iOS 4 to this point because of reports that later versions run slow/poorly, though I have no personal experience with it.

Since iCloud isn't an option until iOS 5, I did a backup/restore using iTunes on my Mac.

The restore seems to work, with no error messages, but when it completes, the new iPad Air is sitting at the "Hello" / setup screen. Swiping gets me to the language choice, and then it wants WiFi info, etc... It eventually gets to the screen asking if I want to set up as new or restore from backup.

Restore from backup takes me to the connect to iTunes screen and basically I start the process all over in a continuous loop.

If I set up as new, all of her apps and data do actually seem to be on the device, but many of her games are back to level 1 (like a clean install). I'm guessing that's because they think they're on a different iPad.

What am I missing here?

I've also tried a recovery mode restore with the same results...

 

[Night Spring]

Did you try turning off the iPad and starting it up again? I'd try that after a restore when you get the "hello" screen.

It might also be worth it to consider upgrading the iPad 1 to iOS 5, making a backup with it on iOS 5, then restore that backup to the Air.

 

[emieczko]

I have, indeed, cycled power after restore. No change .

Upgrading the old iPad to 5 is on my list of next steps. I've just been hesitant because of reports that 5 runs slower than 4 on the iPad 1. At this point, though, the 1 will be relegated to toy/movie player for the 5yo., so a moderate performance hit really isn't a big deal...

 

[Night Spring]

Hmmmmm. Another thing that occurs to me is that it's possible the Air might be defective. Did you try calling Apple Support?

 

[emieczko]

I have considered it, just haven't done it yet...

I do see posts in the Apple Support forums of similar problems. I haven't yet found one that includes a fix... Several users are reporting success with the beat your head against the wall method, i.e. just keep trying to restore and eventually it works, lol. I also found at least one report of success by taking it in to Apple.

I was hoping that either I was missing something obvious, or that one of the uber gurus here would have a better idea

I started heading down the "upgrade to iOS 5" path on the old iPad last night, but stopped when I got a warning method about data loss from 4 to 5. I'll have to read up on that. I don't recall there being a known issue with data loss form 4 to 5, but if there was, perhaps that's what I'm running into going from 4 to 7.

 

[Night Spring]

I started heading down the "upgrade to iOS 5" path on the old iPad last night, but stopped when I got a warning method about data loss from 4 to 5. I'll have to read up on that. I don't recall there being a known issue with data loss form 4 to 5, but if there was, perhaps that's what I'm running into going from 4 to 7.

Another idea that occurred to me -- did you try deleting your backup and starting a new one?

Also, how many apps does your wife have? You could try deleting apps for which she doesn't mind losing data, in the hope that one of those is causing the restore hangup.

 

[emieczko]

Another idea that occurred to me -- did you try deleting your backup and starting a new one?

Also, how many apps does your wife have? You could try deleting apps for which she doesn't mind losing data, in the hope that one of those is causing the restore hangup.

My wife has approximately one metric crap ton of apps, lol. It's downright horrendous. Between her and my daughter, that iPad is almost at capacity (16Gb) and it's probably 80% apps.

That said, I now have a bigger problem in that I've tried to upgrade the old iPad to iOS 5 in hopes of performing an iCloud backup from it. Now I'm having issues getting it to restore properly as well.

Definitely seems like something isn't happy in the backup file.

My frustration level is maxing out. I might have to walk away from this for a day. That'd be much more palatable option if it weren't for the fact that this is my wife's shiny new gift, and now neither it or her original iPad are usable, lol.

I do greatly appreciate the ideas so far though!

 

[Night Spring]

That said, I now have a bigger problem in that I've tried to upgrade the old iPad to iOS 5 in hopes of performing an iCloud backup from it. Now I'm having issues getting it to restore properly as well.

Definitely seems like something isn't happy in the backup file.

Ouch. That is very unfortunate. I did have to start all over on my iPhone once, because something went wrong with my backup files -- the backup size kept doubling every few days, maxing out my iCloud backup space, and I tried everything I could think of, but couldn't get it to stay down. I took it in for a genius appointment, and the genius concurred that all I could do was setup as new and start over. Fortunately, I don't game much on my iPhone, and most of my crucial app data was stored in the cloud. It took me a day to add back all my email accounts and log back into all my apps and online stuff, but the end result was a trimmed down and much faster iPhone, because I only reinstalled apps that I was really using. Hope you can talk your wife into seeing the positives in the situation -- it sucks that the backup isn't restoring like you expected, but sometimes things just happen.