iPhone funeral?

[wbstanley9109]

bricked(?) iPhone 4 mystery... please read!

Hey everyone, I joined here because I've been reading the articles and how-to's ever since I got my first iPhone, and I have a great deal of faith in the members here to hopefully provide me with an answer to my problem...

Firstly:
iPhone 4, AT&T, GSM, iOS 5.0.1
Previously jailbroken.

Last night, I was using my phone as normal when it shut itself off and then proceeded to continually boot to the Apple logo, shut off, and then repeat. Initially I figured just a quick iTunes restore would do the trick but instead I got a slew of errors, depending on several factors. (ie: hosts file pointing at Saurik's server or Apple's server, TinyUmbrella TSS on/off, etc Those errors included 20, 21, 1602 most frequently.

(Also, to clarify, I think it should be said that I'm not really a tech or Apple newbie, and that I have successfully pwned and SSH'd into this phone without any problems.)

I tried every suggestion to correct those errors including iREB, RecBoot, creating a custom firmware, doing the restore in normal DFU mode, in pwned DFU mode, I mean the WHOLE shabang. Tried everything and still no dice.

The strange thing that seems to happen is regardless of any factors, when I go to restore in iTunes it says, "verifying restore with Apple...", the progress bar moves, but then the text changes to "Preparing iPhone for restore" my phone suddenly kicks out of DFU mode and attempts to start again, hence starting the infinite booting loop again...

Any suggestions? Thoughts? Feel free to ask questions if I've left something out...

I'm at my wits end and am currently toying with a program called idevicerestore, I even installed ubuntu alongside my Windows installation so that I could compile it and hopefully restore the phone's firmware that way.

Help please!

 

[BLiNK]

first things that come to mind that you may want to try:

update iTunes.. reinstall iTunes.. use a different cable..try another computer (if possible)

AND with any of these suggestions just try restoring as normal, without any of the programs you have downloaded

 

[wbstanley9109]

first things that come to mind that you may want to try:

update iTunes.. reinstall iTunes.. use a different cable..try another computer (if possible)

AND with any of these suggestions just try restoring as normal, without any of the programs you have downloaded

Thank you for such a quick response!

I did attempt uninstalling all Apple software from my computer, cleaned up the registry and hard drive using CCleaner, restarted, reinstalled, no dice... tried another cable, and then tried it on my friends computer which is known good... (it's the household Skyrim PC, lol) I got the error 21 code on that PC as well.

 

[BLiNK]

are you out of warranty? either way, it'd be worth taking it to an Apple store. even if they could tell you if it's completely gone or not

 

[wbstanley9109]

Yeah unfortunately I'm out of warranty =/ And in my area, the nearest Apple stores are two hours away... I think if push comes to shove, and I can't figure anything else out, I'll have to go that route.

 

[BLiNK]

you mentioned you "were" jailbroken. does that mean you were at the time of when this happened?

assuming you were using redsn0w you do know that you have to do a tethered boot within the redsn0w program, don't you?

 

[wbstanley9109]

you mentioned you "were" jailbroken. does that mean you were at the time of when this happened?

assuming you were using redsn0w you do know that you have to do a tethered boot within the redsn0w program, don't you?

Sorry, that comment wasn't very clear... what I meant was that in the past, on 3.1.3/4/4.1/4.3.3 etc; the phone was jailbroken, but I never JB'd on 5 or 5.0.1.

 

[wbstanley9109]

So, update:

After endless hours of fiddling with compiling some really poorly documented source files into that program, I decided to go back to screwing with iTunes in Windows. I came across some reading about error 21, which I was consistenly receiving, that adamantly said that it was NOT a hardware issue. Instead the article pointed to it possibly being a problem with the usb cable you were using, or the particular usb port on your machine.

I would post the discussion link but I haven't posted 10 times yet XP

So I started trying every USB port I had, and lo and behold, upon plugging it into the 3rd port, the iPhone magically booted up, no problem.

????????????????

I guess I'll just be thankful =P

 

[HYPERformance]

saw your topic and i was expecting pictures of you digging a hole for your phone