iPhone Restored a jailbroken iphone 3gs.. stuck on the apple logo, what do I do from here?

[mbarrett001]

I just bought an iphone 3gs second hand and decided to restore it. I knew it was jail broken, but I didn't now factory restoring it would hurt it and possibly ruin the phone. I didn't sync it to my itunes because I was going to do that after I had gotten all of the previous things off of it, including the jailbreak. Now it has been 4 hours of the start up apple menu and I am freaking out. It will stay on the same screen, but still use up energy because it keeps dying and then rebooting, probably because its using too much energy obviously. How can I get my itunes to recognize it so I can put it in DFU mode? What do I do? Is there any hope left?

 

[dhlizard]

Assuming it does not have any hardware issues:
Download the 5.1.1 IPSW to desktop.
Make sure host file points to Apple
Use Redsn0w to put the phone in pwnedDFU mode
Use iTunes to navigate to the IPSW
Choose set up as new, do not restore it to any backup
Use Absinthe 2.0.4 if you wish to jailbreak

iClarified.com has tutorials

 

[mbarrett001]

Okay I downloaded the 5.1.1 IPSW to my desktop, and when finished downloading I clicked on it and it just opened itunes, is that right? What is a host file? Should I download redsn0w now?