iPhone unknown error (-18)!?

try this.
turn the phone off, pop the sim card out, wipe it with the cloth that came withe the phone, put the sim card back, while pressing the home button connect the phone to usb cable(dont use the dock)then follow instructions that will show up on the phone.
good luck

I took out the sim card, wiped it off, put it back in the phone and then followed the rest of your instructions. I used the usb cable. There were no instructions on the phone other than the pictures that show up - the itunes logo and a picture of my usb cable. When itunes pops up I still get the same message - I cant read the contents, try to restore, but the same error keeps happening. Can I uninstall itunes and then reinstall it? Can I install the former version I had on my iphone? This is ridiculous. I've been working on this since 6pm cst and it is now 10:30 cst.

Anytime.

# Disconnect your iPhone from your Mac or Windows computer.
# Press and hold the sleep/wake and home buttons simultaneously for about 20-30 seconds, until you see a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in the middle accompanied by the text “Please Connect to iTunes.”
# Connect your iPhone to your computer and launch iTunes if it does not automatically launch.

I tried to sync my iphone this evening and it had some kind of update 1.1.2 and so I went ahead and did the update. But now my phone is working. I've tried to restore my phone but it says iphone could not be restored and gives me an error 18 message. Please help, anyone?!

b_behringer wrote:
# Disconnect your iPhone from your Mac or Windows computer.
# Press and hold the sleep/wake and home buttons simultaneously for about 20-30 seconds, until you see a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in the middle accompanied by the text “Please Connect to iTunes.”
# Connect your iPhone to your computer and launch iTunes if it does not automatically launch.

Did you try this?

yes I tried that but I never got the yellow triangle thing to show up. What shows up is my itunes icon and the usb cable showing that I should hook it up to itunes. once I do that this pop up message on my computer says iTunes cannot read the contents of the iphone. Go to summary tab and click restore. I hit restore, it runs and then brings up iphone could not be restored. unknown erroer (-18)

Have you closed and then reopened iTunes?

You need to put the phone in recovery mode then.