Reset and Restore iPhone to Original Default Factory Settings with Recovery Mode
iPhone display freezing? iPhone doesn’t detect by or appear in iTunes? iPhone cannot sync with iTunes on PC or Mac? Cannot make or receive calls, send or receive text messages, or access email or the web? Or worse, iPhone simply won’t turn on and does not respond to tap or button press? If the problem still persists after you have reseted the iPhone, or tried various iPhone troubleshooting, it may be worthwhile to invoke recovery mode to restore iPhone to default factory settings, the original state as when you first received and unwrapped the phone.
Restoration of iPhone to original factory defaults will likely to fix all problem, with the downside that all data and information stored on your phone will be lost. Normally iTunes will make a backup automatically when you connect and sync the iPhone with the program, however, it’s still a good recommendation to copy out and backup everything that you may need on the phone before proceed to restore the iPhone.
To restore iPhone and reset the phone to default factory settings, follow these steps:
- Turn off iPhone – Hold down the Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds until the red slider appears, then slide the red slider. Ignore this step if your iPhone is already off.
- Press and hold down the Home button for about 10 seconds until a yellow triangle with a text which says Please Connect to iTunes appears.
- Plug the iPhone into Mac or Windows PC. Release the button if you haven’t.
- Run and open iTunes if it’s not already opened yet.
- iTunes will prompt a message that says iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode. Click OK.
- You will be taken to the iPhone pane. Then, click on Restore.
- Wait for the full restoration process to complete, and the iPhone will be back to the original settings state as when it left the manufacturing factory, typically a working phone again if you face any problem, unless it’s hardware related.
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Entries (RSS)
June 26th, 2009 04:11
hey.. i need your help… PLEASE!!!
i´ve got an iphone with broken power button and i need to get it into restore mode… ana suggestions
June 19th, 2009 19:44
[...] [...]
June 13th, 2009 21:56
Hi Fellow Blogger, I’ve never posted before, {but|only} your article was so {good|genuine} I just had to {stop|come} in and say GREAT JOB
June 7th, 2009 07:56
so i have a jail broken iphone. i need to reset the phone because it has viruses but the jail break in the software has changed my phone to where all these restore procedures dont work for my phone. is there any other way i can reset the phone or open it to reset the software. i also have broken iphones is there anyway i can switch the hard drives so i dont have to deal with this problem. thanks
May 15th, 2009 22:58
I get the message restore and upgrade, not just upgrade, and I am already using itune 8.2
any suggestions ?
May 8th, 2009 10:55
i had the frozen pineapple as well! follow berrys directions turn off, hold down home, plug in usb, then open itunes, it will prompt the restore! Thanks berry!
May 8th, 2009 01:23
Oh dear god. Thanks. Had some virus, ants, vines or snakes where smothering the apple sign on the iphone (original). Think it came from a 3rd party app, but could have been one of the apps I was using to avoid having to wipe the phone with a new computer / itunes (disk aid is a good one for macs). Apple store said they did not know how to fix and was out of warranty (jail broken). Tried everything, that hold the button down for 10 while connecting to the usb port worked a treat, near through it away.
May 6th, 2009 22:18
Okay, i dont know if im just a ditz or this is just stuffed. I have the phone off, press the home button as i plug in the usb. Now i get the USB thing pop up, but nothing about connecting to iTunes. I even did the whole, hold the home button whilst i load iTunes but still nothing. I know the iPhone is getting picked up cause i get stupid AutoPlay. Maybe its cause im using Windows?
March 17th, 2009 19:54
Hello! My iPhone has completly fucked up. When i do as supposed above i get the “connect to iTunes”, iTunes discover the phone wnd when I click “reset” it says that it will do a complete reset and INSTALL THE LATEST IHPNE SOFTWARE!!! But I dont want the 2.2.1 modem firmware!! Will it download 2.2.1 and update??
February 24th, 2009 09:00
I’m a total novice to Apple products and I had no trouble. This is what I did:
1. Power off the iPhone. Attach the USB cable to the phone.
2. Hold down the Home button and plug the USB cable into the computer, keep pressing HOME while you start iTunes.
3. When the iPhone screen shows a USB cable, you can let go of the Home button.
4. iTunes guides you through the rest. I chose to restore to a prior configuration, not to set up as a new iPhone. This allowed me to reload the apps, contacts, etc. that were previously synced. It did not restore the jailbreak software, which was exactly my purpose.
I had a jailbroken phone that started freezing up and couldn’t read the database for my Cydia & Installer apps. Accordingly, I restored the phone to factory settings. I lost those apps, but I can jailbreak again if needed.
February 22nd, 2009 15:00
i tried to quickpwn my iphone and now all i have is the pineapple icon and nothing else happen.
January 15th, 2009 21:25
Hi everybody, this problem was happened to me today and I return the Iphone back to normal by followng these step.
1- You must have restored copy in your pc or try to find it from your friend.
2-Hold down the Sleep/Wake button with home button for a few seconds until you see USB pluging is requiest.
3- Conntect it to Itune apple software, then press the restore and wait, till completed then the system will back to the stored version with a new update.
I hope this will help.
Good luck
December 20th, 2008 23:42
restoring phone — you must hold down the home button while connecting the usb cable to computer to get the pop-up message. just holding button will not do anything.
November 30th, 2008 04:03
i have reset my iphone now it stay in standby mode all the day it dont like to enter the system
November 14th, 2008 01:03
does this erase everything? i mean. if have jailbroken my iphone, and don’t want it to be jailbroken anymore. will this do that?
thank you!
July 23rd, 2008 08:03
Hola Pues Yo Quise Ponerle La Nueva Vercion2.0 Al iPhone Clasico Pero Cuando Lo Pongo Desde El iTunes Se Keda En La Pantalla Cuando Resien Lo Compre
¿Como Le Hago Para Desbloquearlo?
July 21st, 2008 08:04
Hi all
heres the issue, i have made the mistake of installing a 3rd party app on my jailbroken 1.1.4 phone, that would have got me access to sms, emails, weither, on the “SLIDE TO UNLOCK” screen…
installation warned me that if a conflicted with an other instalation occurs just unistall the app, also asked me to rebooth my phone wich I did…
sadness was my 1st feeling when I witness my phone not boothing, stuckd on the (BEEP) apple logo, played around with it, did every forum on the net, I realy did it all…
and now my phone is constantly on restore mode.
now with the gun in my left hand and one bullet in the left, im looking at my phone, trying not to flinch…
thx in advance,
Francky
ferrez@msn.com
July 18th, 2008 22:54
yeah pankaj kumar n zimm i have the same problem and i cant get the yellow triangle to come up, whenever i connect to itunes it comes up with either “invalid response received from device” or the “pair recordings” are missing or something like that. Whenever i hold the home button for 10 seconds nothing happens and when i turn it on the circle rotates and then freezes and then the iphone stays at that screen until it gets low battery and when i charge it the same thing happens so technically i can’t even turn off my iphone if you fixed it please tell me and if anyone else knows how to fix it please reply. Thank you.
July 3rd, 2008 15:20
Hey Zimm.
Even I have exactly the same problem. Did you fix your problem. Please tell me how. Thanks.
May 5th, 2008 04:15
root folder f*cked up… what should I do?
I think I’m in deep sh!t… one of those famous Boss Tools left a shorcut of the folder “var” in the root directory (instead of leaving the folder there as it should).
Now, when I try to turn on my ipod, it keeps on showing me the silver apple and the circle that represents the “working” icon for ever. The only thing I got to discover is that the ipod is creating a new “var” folder with the needed files to sync with itunes (because when I plug it in, itunes says that it cannot connect to the ipod because there is a link file missing)
I think I know which file is missing but cannot replace it if the ipod is working. And the ipod itself doesn’t replace it.
Is there any method to edit those files so it wont prompt the typical “Failure” message that appears for trying to replace a file that is being used? Or in other words: edit files while ipod tuner off?
BTW… the backup file of the “var” shortcut was corrupted so there is no way back to the older config
zimm_069@hotmail.com if anybody could help me plzzzzzzzz!!
sorry for any grammar/spelling mistake. English is not my first language.
May 4th, 2008 15:49
The trick that is mentioned here on this site did not work for me either.
I had the following problem: I had an iphone that a few weeks ago I had backed up with itunes, but then I wanted to restore it back to that particular backup. The problem seems to be that whenever you attach your iphone to itunes, it does a sync which then will overwrite the backup that is on the computer. I didn’t want to connect the iphone to my computer as that would destroy the backup that I wanted. So what I did was to connect the iphone to another computer with itunes, and via itunes click on “restore” which re-downloaded version 1.1.4 of the iphone software, and re-installed it on the iphone. That process took about 10 minutes. Right when the iphone is rebooting, however, and while itunes does not show that any iphone is connected, I disconnected the iphone from that second computer. The reason I did this is that if I let the iphone continue along, itunes would have restored whatever was on that second computer (as I mentioned above, I wanted what was stored on the first computer to be restored on the iphone). I then connected the new pure factory-reset iphone over to the first computer, the one that had the backup that I wanted, connected it, and itunes saw it as a new iphone and asked if I wanted to set it up as a new iphone or if I wanted to restore the backup that I wanted. I chose the latter option of course, and it restored it perfectly. I hope this helps someone out there.
BTW, I heard from a friend that this trick also works if you have a jailbroken iphone and you want to get it restored to a jailfixed configuration, as long as the backup you have of the iphone is before the jailbroken state of the phone.
February 25th, 2008 07:48
I got a problem I can’t get the iphone off…the sleep/off button doesn’t work so how do I get to turn this iphone of???
I tried to empty the battery but it doesn’t work cause it just goes in a sleep mode untill I plug it back in…
Could somebody help???
iPhone is 1.1.3 04.03.13_G 8gig US version
THXXXXXXXXXX
February 4th, 2008 09:12
the restore screen does not appear when i hold the home button for 10 secs or hold the home + sleep button for 10 secs. i need to restore my iphone because i downloaded too many apps and i can no longer see my 3.0 installer icon
November 28th, 2007 09:14
always perform the upgrade / downgrade without a USB hub!!!
i got errors from itunes untill i changed the USB port to the back of my PC.
October 4th, 2007 10:48
[...] to fw 1.1.1, yet. Sometimes, due to some issues or troubleshooting requirement, you may need to restore the iPhone. However, you also have to avoid or bypass firmware update 1.1.1 and only restore using version [...]