iPhone 4 stuck on apple screen after Erase and Reset

warriorfan808 · May 28, 2011

Hey guys,

First off, I'm a complete noob when it comes to Iphones. I bought this Iphone from a guy about 2 months ago. It was SW Unlocked and Jailbroken. I didn't want to get a contract because I move around so much and usually go with pay as you go phone cards.

This all happened when my brother came home with his Iphone 3G. He bought it from a store here in Hawaii and it seemed to have a ton of information from the previous owner. We looked online and a youtube video showed us how to Reset and Erase all data. I looked it up and people said it wouldn't mess up the Unlock or Jailbreak, so we did it. It sat there for a 45 minutes and my brother began to freak out.

I remembered that it said it could take a few hours, so I told him that I'll do it with mine too so he feels comfortable. The guy I bought the phone off didn't take a lot of his data off either, so I figured it would be a good idea.

Well, here I am. It has been 13 hours now and it's still on that screen. I ended up trying to do a reset by pushing the home button and the power button on the top. It didn't work.

I know this is even worse, but I've never used Itunes for my phone. I'm downloading it now to install. I read others had issues like this, but ended up recovering with their itunes. The thing is, I never used itunes, so I don't have anything to recover from. If it helps, I did manually backup everything on my phone, the old drag and drop method.

If you guys can help me out, that would be great. I'm glad I found this forum because it looks like I'm going to have to really learn how to use this thing. I'm just hoping it's not junked.

bab2010 · May 28, 2011

You need itunes to be able to restore your iphones, download the latest itunes from apple website, install it on your computer, connect your device to your computer while having itunes runing already, next you will press home and power buttons both for 10s, release power button but keep holding home button until itunes discover your phone in recovery mode. From there just follow on itunes screen instructions, if you have issues post back.

warriorfan808 · May 28, 2011

Thanks a lot bab2010. Do you know if my unlock and jailbreak will still work? I remember a buddy of mine telling me to be careful when updating my phone because he did this once and there wasn't an unlock for the version he upgraded too. I guess what I'm asking is if I need to download an older version of Itunes so if my phone loses it's unlock, then I can still unlock it.

Sorry man, I'm really new to iphones. BTW, thanks a lot. The help is really appreciated.

bab2010 · May 28, 2011

Do u remember the version of iOS which was installed on the phone? Also do u remember what is the baseband of your phone?

warriorfan808 · May 28, 2011

I don't know any of it. I'm going to try and contact the guy I bought it from and see if he knows the info. Damn, I feel like such a moron. I got this thing and never really learned how to use it. I usually dabble in things to figure them out, but I've been really lazy with this phone. Well, lazy and worried that if I do something with Itunes, somehow my IOS will upgrade or whatever and then I'm screwed.

When I reset it and then plug it into my laptop, I get the battery indication screen showing that it's completely drained of batter and charging. After a couple seconds, it goes back to the apple icon.

I live in Germany and my plug is different than what's here in the States, so I've been using my iphone cable and my plug for my Kindle It's been working just fine and I plugged it in while my phone was resetting.

warriorfan808 · May 28, 2011

I got in contact with him. He doesn't know the info either. He usually goes to this store near Alamoana. Hopefully I can figure out how to fix it myself, so I can also go back and fix my brothers. Worse comes to worse, I guess I can head down to Alamoana and get it fixed. I don't want to get it fixed in Germany. My German is pretty crap and if you don't speak someone's language, they usually try to rip you off. Ran into t his problem a few times already.

bab2010 · May 28, 2011

Let us know how it goes.

warriorfan808 · May 28, 2011

I bought a new charger for my phone. I noticed that one issue I've been having is that the phone wasn't charging. I'm wondering if it just never finished the erase and reset because the battery was never charged?

Does anyone know how the restore off of Itunes works? When it does the restore, will it install a new firmware version on the phone? I want to download the new itunes, but I'm afraid that if I do, it will repair the phone with the newest firmware which doesn't have a jailbreak or unlock for it yet.

warriorfan808 · May 29, 2011

I did the following:

Downloaded an old Itunes package off a torrent
Installed it
Connected Iphone to laptop
Held the top and bottom buttons on the iphone until the apple went away
let go of the top botton, while maintaining contact on the bottom
and then saw a prompt from Itunes to set the phone back to factory.

I didn't do it because I'm afraid that if I do, I won't be able to unlock my phone. I tried disconnecting from the internet while I do this and it gave me an error. So it does look that getting an old Itunes app isn't going to help because they get the image from the internet to restore.

Anyone else got any ideas?

bab2010 · May 29, 2011

If the old iOS shsh was saved, then you should be able to restore back your old iOS, but here are some questions which need to be answer first.
1- What was the iOS version which was installed in the phone?
2- was that iOS shsh saved before?
3- what was the baseband of your phone?
If you don't know those informations answers, u can ask the persone who sell u the phone. If he doesn't have the answer then you are likely going to upgrade.