iPhone XS Max cannot restore - error code 14
Has anyone found a different - and working solution - to this problem?
I was trying to update my wife's iPhone XS Max from iOS 14.2 to 14.3. I connected the iPhone XS Max to my iMac running Catalina... so the update was being done in a Finder tab and not with iTunes.
The update failed with an error code of 75. Then, the phone becomes stuck on the Recovery screen. I tried to restore since I did have a recent backup of the phone. That failed with an error code of 14.
I then tried the following suggested "remedies"... all without success:
- Made sure there were no active firewalls.
- Disabled my Sophos Home virus/malware protection
- Tried different USB ports on my iMac
- Tried a different USB cable (both are Apple cables)
- Deleted downloaded software update ipsw file and reinstalled it.
- Downgraded my MacBook Air to run Mojave (so I could try the update/restore using iTunes)
- Repeated Steps 1–5
I've probably tried update and/or restore now close to 50 times. ALL ended with error code 14.
When trying from my MacBook Air using iTunes, I can see that the failure ALWAYS happens at the very end of the "Verify iPhone Software" phase (as shown in the top status messages in iTunes) - which happens after completing the "Restoring iPhone Software" phase. At the point of failure, the status bar indicator on the iPhone always seems to be at the same progress point: almost exactly in the middle of the two bottom Apple "lobes" in the Apple logo.
Before starting the update attempts, I made particular note that there was only about 20GB being used of the 256 GB total, so the errors should not be related to lack of free space on the internal NAND flash chip. Also worth noting, these update/restore headaches initially started months ago, with updates in the iOS 13 range. Also possibly worth mentioning that this phone has often gotten frozen at the Apple logo and needed to do a forced restart in order to load the home screen.
I have been told by a couple of repair shops (one Apple certified and the other not) that the error code 14 can often be related to hardware problems with the internal NAND flash chip. Has anyone else heard that this error 14 can be a hardware problem?
Anyone have any alternate strategies?
iPhone XS Max
