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What to do if your iPhone 3G is stuck on the Apple logo

B

blackmondo

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 25, 2006
70
36
Hey guys,

I posted this over at the Apple discussions board, but figured it would be useful here too:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7560796#7560796

My iPhone got stuck at the Apple Logo after a hard reboot (which is done by holding down home and power for about 5 seconds). Also, I couldn't get to the settings screen in iTunes to hit the restore button, since iTunes would beachball when I plugged it in via USB.

It turns out though you can make the phone enter a full software restore mode, as described here:

http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum/iphone-software/help-iphone-is-stuck-19333.html

"Plug your iPhone to the usb and then press and hold the power and the home button at the same time it will reboot but keep on pressing it next time it will boot,(let it boot twice while holding) an itune logo will appear and now you can restore, try it it works"

I have just restored the firmware etc now, which got my phone up and running again with factory settings, and now I am in the process of restoring from a backup (seems to be working, but it takes a long time I must admit).

Hope this helps others!

Trav
 
Great!

@davey0 - glad to hear this helped you out. I freaked out when it happened to me, since I kinda thought if I need a phone replacement, I might be without a phone for 7 days (which is how long Optus in Australia were told to expect the next shipment of phones in). Thankfully this fixed my phone too!

Also, I've been discussing this with another member "stevek42" over at the Apple discussions board, along with some useful tips I believe might help others who have any issues.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1597200&tstart=0

We both suspect that there might be issues with Apps conflicting with each other or the OS itself, since we both went pretty hard installing lots of them from the App Store.

good luck guys!
 
The thing froze again after a clean restore. It looks like I'm going to have to get it replaced. I dread having to go down to the Apple store tomorrow. :(
 
davey0 said:
The thing froze again after a clean restore. It looks like I'm going to have to get it replaced. I dread having to go down to the Apple store tomorrow. :(
Click to expand...

oh no really? Did it freeze after being restored to FACTORY settings, or after it had restored the BACKUP of your phone? I think the other guy at the Apple board had problems when he restored his own backup, since something there had become corrupt.
 
It froze after being restored to factory settings. I restarted it a couple of times and it is finally responsive, but as soon as I plug it into a computer (tried Mac and PC) and start iTunes, it freezes and I am left with that rotating ball. It becomes responsive after unplugging it. Unfortunately, I have no way of reactivating it.

I also tried a couple of different USB cables, but nothing seems to work.
 
that's no good. the first time I bought an iPod (the first batch of 40GB click-wheels) it had a similar problem where my whole computer would become unresponsive when it was plugged in via firewire. I had to get a hardware replacement for that one myself in the end. Unfortunately my replacement had a hard disk with bad blocks on it, which caused random song corruption, but by the time I'd spent a week getting the original replaced, I couldn't be bothered replacing it again!

This is often the way of first-revision Apple hardware unfortunately. But like myself, yourself, and many many other people, I couldn't resist being one of the first to get this iPhone3G, especially since I live in Australia :)

I hope you manage to solve the problem in the end!
 
I've had this problem as well. And even though I've got a working phone its slow to sync, slow to boot (about 1 minute on apple logo) and slow to enter Settings (about 30-40 seconds). I'm an upgrader and when my phone froze the first time I tried the restore process and selected to backup from data on my PC. I'm just waiting for some more feedback on other forums before I try restoring as a new phone. It seems highly likely to me that the backup is faulty.
 
oelph@blueyonde said:
I've had this problem as well. And even though I've got a working phone its slow to sync, slow to boot (about 1 minute on apple logo) and slow to enter Settings (about 30-40 seconds). I'm an upgrader and when my phone froze the first time I tried the restore process and selected to backup from data on my PC. I'm just waiting for some more feedback on other forums before I try restoring as a new phone. It seems highly likely to me that the backup is faulty.
Click to expand...

mine is quite slow to boot as well, but I thought that might be normal - can anyone else chime in on their typical boot time for a reset? for both 3G phones and the original running 2.0?
 
Guys, this has been happening to me since I got my iPhone 3G yesterday. I've restored FOUR times in 24 hours. It takes at least an hour each time (restoring the software + restoring from my backup) ...

I don't think it's our phones. It has to be a problem with iTunes 7.7, or the 2.0 software. Right?
 
Fixed mine. I did another restore but when prompted to setup as a new phone or restore from my backup I chose the former. Going into settings takes about 3 seconds. Bootup takes about 10 seconds. All seems good now.
 
Correction. Six restores.

Word of advice: DO NOT update any apps using the App Store icon on your iPhone. :rolleyes:

This is ****ing ridiculous.
 
mavis said:
Correction. Six restores.

Word of advice: DO NOT update any apps using the App Store icon on your iPhone. :rolleyes:

This is ****ing ridiculous.
Click to expand...

I agree! Every time my phone has crashed it has been while I'm in the app store. Especially if something is already installing in the background.

One thing, I downloaded a bunch of apps to my mac before the store was officially advertised in itunes. Did anyone else having problems do the same?
 
blackmondo said:
I agree! Every time my phone has crashed it has been while I'm in the app store. Especially if something is already installing in the background.

One thing, I downloaded a bunch of apps to my mac before the store was officially advertised in itunes. Did anyone else having problems do the same?
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I did. You think that's the problem?
 
Does your phone get warm on the back? Mine was warm to the touch and it crashed constantly last night to the point where I wasn't able to connect to iTunes after a restore. However, this morning I turned it on and it worked PERFECTLY! The back was cold, but after about ten minutes of use it got warm again and started crashing. Now it's back to how it was last night.
 
mavis said:
Yeah, that's what I did. You think that's the problem?
Click to expand...

yeah it just might be something like that. I don't know for sure, but just trying to look for a pattern! :)

I know the other person having problems over on the Apple boards had said he'd downloaded about $200 worth of apps and a bunch of free stuff, so I figure he was probably as keen as I was to get hold of Apps.

I also figure that perhaps some of the Apps that were available that early were not "quite" ready to be downloaded yet. It's not like Apple had announced that the store was ready - at the time, I found it through a direct link from the Mac rumors article.

In any case, my phone is working well at the moment!

UPDATE: I just remembered too, I reckon I initially downloaded a few apps while in iTunes 7.6, not 7.7 (since the news showed up around the same time, and 7.7 was downloading in the background in Safari).
 
davey0 said:
Does your phone get warm on the back? Mine was warm to the touch and it crashed constantly last night to the point where I wasn't able to connect to iTunes after a restore. However, this morning I turned it on and it worked PERFECTLY! The back was cold, but after about ten minutes of use it got warm again and started crashing. Now it's back to how it was last night.
Click to expand...

mine doesn't get notably warm no. maybe there is indeed some hardware issue with your particular phone. Anyone else's phone getting super-warm?

EDIT: others on the Apple boards are finding this too, and when it gets hot, the phone becomes less responsive. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1598605&tstart=0

I must admit also, I haven't left the house this weekend yet to test using 3G for mobile data, so all my data access has been over wireless. People on the Apple board have noted that the original phone sometimes got hot when accessing data over Edge.
 
I just got a new iPhone. It was extremely easy to exchange. The old one overheated so much that the glass was hot! And when I stuck it back into the box, the top of the box got warm. I'm glad that it didn't explode.
 
blackmondo said:
mine doesn't get notably warm no. maybe there is indeed some hardware issue with your particular phone. Anyone else's phone getting super-warm?

EDIT: others on the Apple boards are finding this too, and when it gets hot, the phone becomes less responsive. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1598605&tstart=0

I must admit also, I haven't left the house this weekend yet to test using 3G for mobile data, so all my data access has been over wireless. People on the Apple board have noted that the original phone sometimes got hot when accessing data over Edge.
Click to expand...

I also have restored my phone over 6 times and this is so frustrating. I just deleted all my free apps and downloaded only the ones I really want. I also downloaded the apps before the store was advertised.

Mine also gets hot before it crashes.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (white): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5A347 Safari/525.20)

You guys having to restore over and over again might want to delete all of your apps and then re-install them one by one until you find the culprit. I did this yesterday, after my ELEVENTH RESTORE and now I have an iPhone that works perfectly. FINALLY! It turned out to be a $25 app I had purchased (the WISDOM English-Japanese Dictionary) and once it was gone, everything works great. Needless to say, Apple's not gonna be through with me until I get that $25 back! ;)

Anyway, I'd give this a shot if you're having app-related issues. It did the trick for me.
 
Just wanted to follow up here in case anyone has anything to suggest ...

Since I posted last in this thread, my troubles have continued and even intensified. I've ended up doing 33 restores on two different iPhones since July 11th. I've taken a number of steps to solve the issue, but nothing has helped:

  • Reinstall iTunes (7.7)
  • Upgrade iTunes (7.7.1)
  • Unplug USB hub, connect iPhone directly to rear USB port on iMac
  • Delete all backups, set up as new phone (x25)
  • Restore using different PC (x2)
  • Get new iPhone
  • Delete 5A347 firmware, re-download fresh copy
  • Delete all apps from HDD, redownload through iTunes
  • Disable app sync in iTunes, install one by one directly on iPhone (x3)
  • Install apps one by one through iTunes only (no direct installs on iPhone)
  • Leave iPhone off overnight, attempt reboot in morning (x2)

Does anyone have any suggestions? These constant restores are very tiring.
 
@blackmondo omg it worked! i've tried several things but it never worked! so THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!! <3
 
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