So a friend of mine gave me his iPhone 3GS to upgrade to the new iOS .. before he handed it to me, he wanted to clear all his stuff so he did the infamous "Erase all content and settings" selection. Once he did that, the iPhone was frozen with the Apple logo and spinning wheel (which isn't spinning lol)
I did some research and tried the "DFU" or what mode to restore the phone. I held down the power and home button for 7 seconds, phone turned off. I then held down the home button while connecting to the usb ... which should have entered the phone into recovery mode. But .. it went back to the frozen Apple and non-spinning spinning wheel.
DFU and recovery mode are 2 different things. The OS was wiped off the phone so u need to be in dfu mode to be able to restore as new thru iTunes. It may take a few times before u can get it. Here's a link with step by step instructions. GL
Finally got it! lol, u were right, I had to do it quite a few times before iTunes finally recognized it and started to restore ... whew! I was worried for a bit there. It's currently restoring and updating the iOS I can breathe again haha