Friday, November 26, 2010

iPhone wants iTunes, endless reboots, must be restored, restore fails. Unknown error 20000 9 28 lame!

Connect to iTunes screenMy iPhone is royally screwed up.

Lesson: Have your important contacts printed out, especially if you will be visiting a city with no Apple store.

WARNING: There is no solution below. I must have a hardware problem.

The  "iPhone wants iTunes" image and the white apple logo of death is all I see on my screen, my iPhone won't boot.

Under Windows XP, I have completely uninstalled and re-installed the latest version of iTunes (10.1), and that includes all the helper apps like Bonjour. I have put the iPhone into Recovery Mode about 10 times and restored.

Hours of work getting my contacts and apps back. It works for a minute, then crashes out, even when I'm not using it. My phone keeps going back to the "plug USB into iTunes" screen.

Endless loop: "Verifying iPhone restore with Apple" then "Preparing iPhone for restore.". then "The iPhone "iPhone" could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (20000). Or error 9, or error 28 which is a hardware problem.

Apple's advice on line: Disable all of your security software so we and every other hacker can remotely rape your computer.

Disabled all firewall and anti-virus software so all of the hidden little Apple apps can infect my computer and phone home... (I'll be wiping  the drive completely and re-installing my clean OS after this violation.) Same problem.

Next to try:
DFU means Device Firmware Update. If a restore using Recovery Mode doesn't work you will want to use DFU Mode as a last resort. When placing your iPhone into DFU Mode it does not load the OS before attempting the restore...

Open iTunes and connect the iPhone to your Mac.

Press and hold the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button at the same time.

After exactly 10 seconds release the Sleep/Wake button. Continue holding the home button until you iTunes pops up a message telling you that it has detected an iPhone in recovery mode.

The iPhone screen will remain black

NOTE***: It may take a few attempts to get your iPhone into DFU mode. Generally, I hold down both buttons then release the Home button just before I think the Apple logo would appear. If you are still holding both buttons down and you see the Apple logo you are holding them down for too long!

Switch computer to a faster network and try the above. Result: "Extracting software..."  (For 25 minutes?!? I have a 100 MB connection, plenty of memory and a fast CPU, what are they doing for 25 minutes?)  "Waiting for iPhone..." (iPhone screen shows progress bar.... no progress for 3 minutes... then it starts moving.... 7 minutes later I get: )  "Your iphone has been restored to factory settings and is being restarted. ...."

It restarts, I get the image telling me to plug in to iTunes. My iPhone says, "iPhone is activated". My contacts: Gone. Apps: Gone. What is my voicemail password again? Getting prompted for that. AT&T can reset it, but each time your restore fails, they will have to reset it again.
So, I'm restoring from another back up. "Restoring iPhone from backup..." which I did before... this time I'm using an older backup. "Settings for your iPhone have been restored..." please leave it plugged in while it restarts. Apple logo, progress bar on the phone....

Worked. Contacts are there... all aps and data  gone... Fun fun.

No, it didn't work. 45 minutes later, the phone crashes and shows the white apple logo again. Reboots, comes back for a few minutes at a time, followed by the "plug in to iTunes" screen or being completely dead most of the time, then working for about 5 minutes before crashing again.  This is after multiple restores to factory defaults.

I plug in to iTunes and now my contacts are all gone. As I tapped "favorites", I watched all of my friend's names turn into just their numbers as my iPhone lost its mind.

Was up until 3 am getting my contacts restored and my apps back. Worked for a few hours, then crashed back to the iPhone wants iTunes screen.

This is how I spent my vacation:
You must restore this iPhone. Plug in to iTunes. Wait a long time.

The iPhone could not be restored. An uknown error occurred (28).

You must restore this iPhone. Plug in to iTunes. Wait a long time.

The iPhone could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (9).

I do not trust iTunes.  I don't want it on my computer at all.

If this is a plot to get me into the store so I'll buy the latest iPhone and renew my contract, it may backfire.   Droid? :-/

1 comment:

Sharp said...

I had this problem and what I found fixed it was taking off the case of the iPhone. With the case on the USB wouldn't go all the way in. Hope this helps.