Cannot restore from iPhone X iTunes backup to iPhone 12 Pro Max

I bought an Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max 512GB on the 6th and picked it up from an Apple Store on the 13th. I had a recent encrypted iTunes backup of my old iPhone X 256GB from which I intended to restore to the new iPhone 12 Pro Max. I didn't want to perform an iCloud restore as that's not as complete as an encrypted iTunes restore, especially when it comes to saved logins etc. Also, I don't want to perform a direct phone-to-phone transfer because my iPhone X's battery is bloated and I'd have to plug it in which would be a fire hazard.

Anyway, when I first turned the new iPhone on, I selected English as my language and then United States as my region. Next, I was shown the Quick Start screen and I opted to "Set Up Manually." On the next screen, the phone asked for a wifi network. Since I'm currently in an extended stay hotel with open wifi, I opted for the "Use Cellular Connection" for privacy reasons ( All my devices that connect to the hotel wifi go through a VPN ). I was then shown a screen with "It may take a few minutes to activate your iPhone." After the phone was activated, I was shown a privacy policy screen and I pressed continue. I chose to set up Face ID later in settings and I then created a 4-digit PIN. Finally, I got to the "Apps & Data" screen. I selected "Restore from Mac or PC". After connecting the new iPhone into my laptop, I launched iTunes and I was presented with a screen which asked me to select a backup, which I did. After that, a progress indicator appeared in iTunes for the restore and my iPhone 12 Pro Max displayed "Restore in progress" on its screen. Anyways, about 1/10th into the restore, I received the following vague error :

iTunes could not restore the iPhone "iPhone" because an error occurred.

After the above, I reset and erased my new iPhone and tried again -- same result. I then tried a different Apple brand Lightning to USB cable -- same result. I then tried different USB ports -- again, same result. I tried a hard reset on the new iPhone and I also tried resetting the Winsock subsystem on my Windows 10 laptop and rebooting -- same result. I even tried turning off all of my virus and malware protection -- again, same result.

I next called up Apple support and the tech with whom I spoke initiated a remote screen sharing session to confirm that I was indeed receiving an error after doing everything correctly. The tech didn't know how to fix the problem so I got transferred to a senior support tech. They told me how to go about performing a factory default "restore and update", but, that didn't work. The tech then scheduled a call for me this afternoon, but they never called, which really makes me angry as I was on the phone with Apple support for over two hours.

My system specs are as follows :

• Laptop : Dell Alienware 17 R5
• OS : Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
• iTunes : Latest version
• iPhone X 256GB iOS version : 14.0.1
• iPhone 12 Pro Max 512GB iOS version : 14.2

I've searched the web and there are many people complaining of this same problem, but I've yet to find a resolution.

If anybody has experienced this problem before and found a way around it, then I'd greatly appreciate any information.

Thanks,

jdbtwo