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Im stuck on the "emergency calls only screen"

I reset the iphone because I bought it from a friend. Now, all I can do is make emergency calls. It shows a picture of the itunes icon with a usb cable. I tried putting in my SIM card and it wont let me do anything but turn it on and off. What do I do?
Thanks

Posted on Jun 17, 2009 2:01 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jun 18, 2009 3:49 PM

I'm stuck on the same screen after updating to 3.0. Rebooting doesn't fix the problem. I can enter my PIN once but it doesn't accept it and goes the emergency call screen. Please help.

Thanks
Louis
7 replies

Jun 19, 2009 5:54 PM in response to lwz

I have exactly the same situation. Updated to 3.0 using my developer account. Made a call this morning without problem. An hour later, I tried to make another phone call. Purple screen. Only emergency calls allowed. My phone was not even connected to the computer when it went dead. I wasn't even using it!
Help!

Apple Genius is not available for TWO days. I never expected Apple to not care especially after I bought Apple Care!

Jun 19, 2009 6:26 PM in response to melynne3

I had the same problem Wed night, and have managed to solve it.

I followed Apple's "Unable to restore" guidelines:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1808

I followed them to the letter.

It took a while (in part due to my network and how I have my iTunes library stored), but it did a complete reset on the phone, and then reloaded my data (I had a backup on iTunes from an earlier sync).

Interestingly, it restored me to OS 3. Sadly, I now have the "grayed out" wifi and bluetooth problem, but it's an improvement over being locked out entirely.

One note: at one point during the forced recovery, my iPhone displayed the "emergency calls only screen" screen again ... but it then chimed twice and continued without a problem.

Hope this helps.

Jun 21, 2009 5:49 PM in response to Kaiser Mitsu

It took a while to fix it for me as well. I tried it on a PC and on a Mac. Finally succeeded on a PC. There are a lot of inaccurate advice such as downgrading the software before upgrading again. I tried that. Tried downgrading Itunes, and also downloaded OS 2.2.2. That advice DOES NOT work in 3.0.

Here are the steps for PC:

Hook up the iphone to your PC. Open ITunes.

Press the power button and home button at the same time on your Iphone. Ignore the red button when it appears. After the phone turns off, continue to press the home button until a window opens on the PC indicating a restore is needed.

Press the "Shift" button while clicking on the "Restore" button in ITunes. It starts to download the none-beta version of OS 3.0. If this doesn't happen, you have to reboot your PC until it does. It took many tries in my case.

Im stuck on the "emergency calls only screen"

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