Help! Have I totally bricked my iphone 3gs trying to jailbreak it? Advice appreciated

zenonithus · Apr 24, 2012

I was given an iphone 3gs (5.0 firmware, 05.16.05 baseband) by my brother, but it was still locked to his sim, so I went head first to jailbreak it myself despite being a total noob to iphones and jailbreaking!

I used redsn0w 0.9.9b7 and whilst everything seemed to run fine it got to the green bar updating screen and was stuck on that for a long time. It then restarted and I got the apple logo and now thats it! It just hangs on the apple logo or the circular loading screen (which doesnt move)

I feel like I've tried everything to fix this. I tried to restore in itunes using a generated sn0wbreeze_iPhone 3GS-5.0.ipsw. But I just get an unkown error 3914

If I can't restore then what else is there? This phone was a gift, so I'm pretty gutted. ANy help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Jmills87 · Apr 24, 2012

You can't restore an old firmware without the SHSH for that firmware, that's why you were getting 3914. You need to restore to 5.1 now, which unfortunately is a tethered jailbreak. Once you jailbreak 5.1 then you can install SAM and use the new SAM unlock method.

P.S. there's no way to brick an iPhone.

zenonithus · Apr 24, 2012

Thanks

I started restoring to 5.1 now. I'm just glad its working! I will look up jailbreaking 5.1 though I'm worried it will do the same thing :S Is there anything I need to be aware of as a noob to all this?

Thomasjtsi · Apr 24, 2012

When Jailbreaking iOS 5.1 be sure to use the latest version of redsn0w (v. 0.9.10b7 I believe) from the Dev-team's blog page. It'll be a Tethered Jailbreak btw.

zenonithus · Apr 25, 2012

what does tethered mean? I keep hearing the term. Is it bad? as in loss of functions?

Thomasjtsi · Apr 25, 2012

A Tethered JB means... when your iPhone restarts or needs turned off for any reason it needs to be plugged into a computer w/ iTunes and redsn0w to Reboot. There isn't any difference in the performance or function of the JB... only you cannot restart your iPhone whenever you like.

Darkstar2007 · Apr 25, 2012

Thomasjtsi said:
A Tethered JB means... when your iPhone restarts or needs turned off for any reason it needs to be plugged into a computer w/ iTunes and redsn0w to Reboot. There isn't any difference in the performance or function of the JB... only you cannot restart your iPhone whenever you like.

You can restart it, but you won't be able to use any jailbroken apps until you boot tethered with redsn0w.

To the OP:
Semi-Tether is also a good package to download if you go the tethered route.
I'm tethered on my iPhone and I haven't had to restart my iPhone in a month.
A tethered jailbreak really isn't all that bad! It hasn't bothered me one bit.