Erasing all content and settings on jailbroken iPhone 4S (iOS 8.1.2)

[koenfucius]

Hello

My wife is using my old iPhone 4S, and a few weeks ago a weird problem occurred. She was trying to send an SMS/iMessage and something apparently went wrong.

Apparently the problem is related to Messaging (probably iMessage) and FaceTime: neither application works at all, and accessing it or its settings either makes the phone very unresponsive, or makes it reboot. Also, a message "iMessage - Your carrier may charge for...(etc)" pops up every few minutes. Tapping Cancel or OK makes no difference to anything(For details of the symptoms, scroll down.)

The phone is properly logged in to my wife's iCloud account, although accessing the iCloud settings can be equally problematic. Just tried it, and it's been 'Verifying' for two minutes already (though the phone is otherwise responsive).

To try and fix the problem I have attempted to Reset Network Settings, but that made no difference. After manually restoring the settings the phone misbehaves just like before.

The next suggestion would seem to be to Erase All Settings and Content, but if at all possible I would like to keep the jailbreak. The phone currently runs iOS 8.1.2.

What is the right procedure to do this please?

Many thanks in advance!

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These are the symptoms more widely:

• unless the phone is in airplane mode (with WiFi enabled), a message "iMessage - Your carrier may charge for...(etc)" pops up every few minutes. Tapping Cancel or OK makes no difference to anything
• The stock Messages app has stopped working. Attempts to open it lead to a blank screen, as if it's stuck. Pressing the home button has no immediate effect, but after a while it takes you back to the home screen. There seems to be a CPU-intensive process taking place, as the phone becomes mostly non-responsive. The way out is to close the Messages app, which can be done by swiping up for maybe a minute until the phone briefly listens to user input. At that point it becomes responsive again.
• Facetime has stopped working. Tapping the icon produces a black screen and leads to similar lack of responsiveness as with the Messages app. Occasionally the phone then reboots, otherwise the same scenario as above.
• Attempting to access the Messages or Facetime Settings (from the Settings 'app') is problematic, certainly when not in Airplane mode. It can lead to the phone spontaneously rebooting, and if that is not the case, it takes a long time for the relevant settings page to appear, if at all (most of the time, after a while the phone simply returns to the home screen).
• The above suggests that whenever some demand is put on anything that requires iMessage/FaceTime resources, the phone gets stuck. This can also be seen from the Clock app's second hand.
• After a while (sometimes hours, sometimes days) the phone can get into a spontaneous reboot cycle, every 5-10 minutes or so. Restarting/hard-rebooting the phone (pressing power and home buttons together) stops this from happening, until the next time

 

[Just_Me_D]

FYI: Apple has been experiencing issues with several of it services today. With that in mind, you might want to wait to restore your device until the issues are resolved. Also, I'm not one to jailbreak my devices, but it is my understanding that you DO NOT initiate an "Erase All Contents and Settings" on a jailbroken device. Hopefully, those who do jailbreak will reply soon too assist you.

 

[koenfucius]

Thank you. The problem first started occurring more than two weeks ago, so it is probably not related to this more recent issue with Apple's servers.

Thanks also for the warning not to "Erase..." when jailbroken. It's exactly because I picked this up elsewhere recently that I wanted to ask for advice first!