error 29 iphone locked in recovery mode

At least pammylu offered a solution to the problem rather than ***** about someone posting their dissappointment with the (NO) Support from Apple.

I sent my brand new phone back to the place I bought it from, had to post it because I am in a outback area of Australia. Meanwhile I used an old phone i had but I had to go two weeks without my listed contacts and notes etc.

Apparently there are Apple approved software programs that can kick the phone out of recovery, the rep from the shop i bought it from said they only give these programs out to licensed dealers and repairers.

I am still shaking my head over the fact that so many people are having this problem and they still haven't changed or taken the upgrade off the site until they fix the f**cking problem.

This has left a very bad taste in my mind and I will be looking at other phones in future. Iphone is not the only touch phone. I love the phone but its kind of useless if there is no or little support when there is a problem.

Thundabolt7 wrote:

I am still shaking my head over the fact that so many people are having this problem and they still haven't changed or taken the upgrade off the site until they fix the f**cking problem.

Which problem is this - the one not affecting millions of users ?

And there is support - try calling the telephone support line.

I guess your right - It didn't effect you so its not a problem. My phone is fixed now so I really don't care what you say.

To those that genuinely offered some support, I say thank you.

To those that are now reading through this thread because they are not one of the millions of users not affected, I hope your phone gets fixed soon.

@Graham Outterside: what are you really contributing here? Have you experienced the problem? Do you know the solution to the problem? Are you the official Apple agitant? Maybe you didn't read this thread... most everyone with the problem DID call Apple support. They wanted us to send them our iPhones, put a $600 hold on our credit card, and ship us out another one BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE A SOLUTION THEY WANT TO SHARE WITH THEIR CUSTOMERS. They don't care that we would be without the device for days or weeks. This is a broken business model, leaving your customers in the lurch, essentially saying "you need us, but we don't need you." As one of Apple's newest customers, it doesn't bode well with me or the others on this page. I'm learning the "Apple way" the hard way, and I won't forget it soon. I understand that you have no sympathy for those of us who have suffered this dilemma, but what point does it really serve to be a heckling spectator about it? We get it... your iPhone works great, ours failed us.... so go heckle another thread, will ya?

+most everyone with the problem DID call Apple support. They wanted us to send them our iPhones, put a $600 hold on our credit card, and ship us out another one BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE A SOLUTION THEY WANT TO SHARE WITH THEIR CUSTOMERS.+

Sorry to bust your bubble but when you call Apple Support you get the same call center in India (or wherever) that is used by Dell, Yamaha, Denon, Microsoft etc. They have a script they have to go by. It goes something like this

Reset
Restore
Return

If you want an actual Apple Employee you have to be moved up the chain to a Specialist or a Customer Relations persons

@Damien: You didn't burst my bubble. I'm new to Apple, not new to technology and computers. My technology career took me from the ranks of Help Desk support to being the CIO of a government agency in a California metropolis until my recent retirement. This issue prompted my first-ever support call to Apple, and I was able to size up very quickly the fact that I was being lead through a script, so to speak; so I insisted on escalated tier support. I received a call-back from a very knowledgeable tech here in the US. Fortunately, he was very open and frank with me, explaining that Apple has tried to resolve this problem for a few weeks and that they were getting nowhere. He admitted to me that they were quite perplexed over this one, based on the timing and the number of calls and the fact that error #29 (unknown error) was giving them no clues. He said that I could 'wait it out' which would take some unknown time to solve, or send it back. I really had no choice because I could afford to do neither, therefore I proceeded to resolve it safely myself with assistance from this forum.

What I'm finding strange is that several folks who are weighing in on this mysterious error (can't tell if they work for Apple or not), seem to have no empathy for anyone who has suffered this error. We are not idiots and we did not cause it, so we came together on this forum when Apple did not have a solution for us. I thought that was the purpose of a forum. It's just strange to me why, as victims in this mess, we continue to get grief over a problem that Apple can't resolve. To me, it's negative energy wasted on the wrong entity.

If you can't wait for a fix and you can't wait for a replacement that puts you and them in a tough spot. They can't do anything more for you and you don't have a working product. Where do you go from there? The only remaining option is fix it yourself (as you and others have done). I have always tried to fix it myself no matter what the issue was, as long as I didn't void my warranty I would try anything. Personally if Apple is willing to give me a new unit I am taking it! But my lifestyle/career would not be to hard hit by the loss of an iPhone for a week or so. But that's just me, I recognize that not all people could afford to lose their link to the world.

BTW Apple employees are almost never seen out here in the wild. If they do venture out here it is usually to yank a thread that has gotten out of hand. You still don't see them though. Some might come out incognito though... but I would bet a lot more $ than I could afford that NONE of them have posted in this thread

I agree with all your points. Aside from the loss of data, I didn't need a $699 hold on my credit card, so I wrangled through it like some others here did. IMHO, this is why forums are an important element to any company's support model.

Having just bought my first Mac 2 weeks ago, I'm certainly learning the ways of Apple in an accelerated way. I hope my decision to become a customer of Apple computers does not leave me pulling my hair out in the near future. We shall see... 🙂

Last night the same problem has occured to me while updating. It stopped downloading a little over halfway through, told me it I had to restore my phone, and when I tried it I got the error 29. Has calling the support center actually helped anyone or is that software the best way to go? I feel so disconnected from the world without my phone but I'd be willing to wait if they are sending new phones to people with this problem!

I just wanted to share my success story for fixing this problem for my friend. My housemate had her iPhone for 11 days. Same thing, during the 0S update, error 29, with phone locked in Recovery Mode. She spent 3 hours on the phone a visited two 3 shops. No one could resolve it and they finally made her make an appointment with Genius Bar and noted they would probably have to send the phone off. I'd thought I'd try and help, got onto this forum and decided to use the quickpwn fix outlined at:

http://ipitg.net/how-to-kick-iphone-out-of-recovery-mode-windows/

The quickpwn solution worked, and I didn't even get to the step 4. where quickpwn connects to your phone. It's like quickpwn un-did what ever was locking the phone and allowed it to re-start. I was worried about voiding the warranty, but quickpwn never did anything my phone, it didn't even fully connect. Because this wasn't my phone I had to agree if I did anything to void the warranty I would have to trade phones! 😉

Once my phone had restarted, I plugged it into a Mac Book Pro that had the backup on it and iTunes connected to the phone and suggested to restore a prior backup. Perfect! Note that the phone was NOW in OS 3.1.3 which was the update that the phone locked on.

My guess is that the phone actually updated, but somehow locked itself in Recovery mode at the end. I wonder if I hadn't done the first RESTORE if the iPhone would have been fully functional and all I would have done was run the quickpwn fix. ????

I was finally able to take mine into the apple store today and they decided to open it up. They told me its because of water damage.. and although I will admit there was a water incident, that happened back in October and its worked fine ever since. It didnt go into the recovery loop until the moment I updated it a few days ago!!! So they told me I have 2 options, I can either go ahead and do an upgrade (which im not up for because I just got it back in June) or they would sell me a new one for only $217. I'm pretty frustrated with them but I guess I'm going to have to do the irecovery thing now. Just thought I'd give anyone else with this problem a heads up, if you have any water damaged your S.O.L!

Hey guys,

I was just able to get through this long process with iRecovery on a Mac, for all my Mac peeps out there, hopefully this will help...

First off plug in your iphone to your Mac. Then you're going to want to download the iRecovery files. It comes in a zip, find the link under Step 1 for Instructions for Mac at this link...
http://www.ihackintosh.com/2009/09/recover-iphone-3gs-from-apple-logo-or-recover y-mode-loop/

You'll unzip the file and notice that there will be two files in the unzipped folder.

Next what you need to do is move the dylib file into your usr/lib folder. The problem is for most of us, we can't access that folder by default(it will show up nonexistent). This is because we need to turn on our hidden files. Here's how...
Go to your Utilities and open up terminal, don't be intimidated. This is what you type in terminal...

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

killall Finder


What this does is unhides the hidden files and folders. Don't be put off by the "killall Finder" it's not a virus or anything bad. Once you've typed that all in and hit enter. You'll notice some hidden files on your desktop.

Next what you want to do is click on an open space on your desktop. Then at the top of your screen click on "Go" then from the drop down select "Go to folder..."
It will bring up a window to type in the folder location and you'll want to type in /usr then hit enter. This will bring up one of those hidden folders you couldn't see before. Now you're looking for either the "lib" folder or "local" then "lib" folder. Ultimately you want to get to the "lib" folder. Once you've gotten there, you'll notice many other dylib files.

Next what you want to do is copy that dylib file that came in the iRecovery download over to that "lib" folder you just found. You'll have to authenticate the file transfer, which just means you have to type in your password to allow the file to be copied over to that hidden folder.

Ok, almost there. Once you've done that you'll go back to Terminal and what you're going to do is just drag the iRecovery file into the Terminal box. It's just a short cut of running iRecovery. Once you do that, you'll see some text run through the terminal. Once it's done you are going to type in the Terminal "-s" without the quotes though. This will start the iRecovery program.

Next you are going to type in Terminal... (Note that after each line you'll hit enter)

setenv auto-boot true
saveenv
reboot
/exit

Hopefully after all that the itunes window will pop up asking you to choose a backup to reboot from or restore factory.

What I did was I kept all those hidden folder windows open, so after the process I went back and deleted the dylib file I copied over and deleted the iRecovery file as well.

To turn "re-Hide" those hidden files and folders you go back to Terminal (I closed out my previous Terminal window and opened a fresh one). And you'll type in ...

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

killall Finder

That will re-hide everything. Please understand that because you're using Terminal and accessing hidden folders that were meant to be hidden for reasons, there is an element of risk to this. However, I've tried to make it as simple as possible for you. I am in no way a programmer, or anything close to it. This was my first time using Terminal and accessing hidden folders and it turned out fine.

I hope that helps friends!

@bythegilmores: Nice job of giving good details! This is one that I am printing out and keeping because I just started using a Mac a couple of weeks ago (I somehow feel that I might see error 29 again in my lifetime.) While I was successful in getting irecovery to work on my Vista PC, I would have no earthly idea where to start with irecovery on my new Macbook Pro... heck, I didn't even know how to 'unhide' files on a Mac, so I truly appreciate your consideration in typing all this info for us to have. Thank you so much... !!!

about a month ago the same thing happened to me, only a two week old iphone, with no hack or nothing. here in norway we don't have an apple support line, so i read this forum and tried irecovery. Sadly it didn't work and i was forced to turn it in to my local store. I told them my problems and what i've read here, but they said they were pretty shure they could fix it. Which was okey, cus i can manage without my iphone for a week or two. But now it's been 27 days and still no iphone. I contacted the local store, but all they had to say was that they are still looking into the problem and that they haven't found a fix for it yet. All i can to is just wait, it can take days or weeks, they didn't know. This really ***** because all i've got now is a Nokia 3310, which i hate with all my life :P just wondering how long they can make me wait? if it's a week or two more fine, but if it's another month and maybe another... I got a really expensive subscription with my iphone, with features like free data traffic etc and i can't use it on this phone... I know that there's nothing u guys can do, but the store pretty much said we got nothing, deal with it. And it ****** me off :P just wanted to share my pain, haha. And sorry for my bad english :/

Thanks bythegilmores...wish you were around a couple weeks ago! (I had to go over to a pc)... I notice the phone has the 3.1.3 upgrade when it it finally came out the recovery loop... and go for it pammylu, you are representing us all, we are right behind you! I am sure Graham wont be helping poor stefanuz in Norway... Hey, stefanuz, I am coming to Stavanger in July from Australia...if you need someone to come to your local store and sort them out... I will be there!