Ok, I received a few emails indicating that the below info helped them. I also received a few emails saying they did not understand. so some basics.
There are two groups of folks having problems. Group A) are folks who have jail broken their phone, and have a modification in their hosts file redirecting their itunes tickler to non apple servers associated with the unsupported apps they are running, Those folks can skip this note. The other group, group B), are normal users who only use APPLE provided software from the APPLE store, have itunes, stock iphones, in a totally supported OEM configuration. For the group B folks, keep reading.
Something happened about 2 versions ago. I remember a prompt that said APPLE would like to collect info about your iphone to ensure the health of it. is that OK, and of course, I picked yes. So what info is being sent from my Iphone and Itunes to APPLE, don't know.
During the sync process, our PC's talk to three APPLE servers. gs.apple.com, phobos.apple.com and albert.apple.com, and of course, we want out Itunes to communicate properly to these servers. Not sure what is happening and what info is being collected that results in our iphones being put into recorevery mode. But I do know that the error, which is now fixed on my Iphone, can be re-produced. note below, the two entries for gs.apple.com and the two entries for albert.apple.com. Note that one of each is commented out, the other is not. The one that is commented out, was supposed to be my servers based on my location. However, when my system talks to these servers, I have the recovery mode loop error. When my system talks to the servers that do not have the comment marks, I do not have the recovery mode error.
It could be that their is a timer on the transmission, and in one senerio, my process exceeds the timer threshold and APPLE thinks I am a jail breaker with a redirected connection to servers other than theirs. In the other senerio, my process obviously does not exceed the watch dog timer, and my itunes session proceeds as normal.
So what does this mean. Well, if you have this problem and are past you warranty and APPLE care extension like I was, you are pretty much on your own. If you have a windows machine, you need to learn and understand how to update your hosts file and evaluate if adding the below critical entries will help you. You may need to reverse the comment choices....the servers that are bad for me, might be good for you, etc. If you are a Mac user, you need a utility like "Gas Mask" that will let you update your Mac hosts file to do this evaluation. Apparently, the pre-load of the information in your hosts file, shortens the session timer time, to the point where it falls within the threshold APPLE has set to determine if you are a jailbreak user.
Well thats it. I'm not a jailbrake user. I'm a normal user. Plain vanilla APPLE store apps. APPLE care, and pro care. I had to learn a lot about things I should not have to worry about to fix this problem. My Iphone sat on my dresser for two months until I figured this out.
I wish APPLE would evaluate this timer setting and consider extending the timer on it a little, it would help the thousands of folks who have this problem.
If this info has helped you, please copy my post and occasionally post it as a quote from me, so that others can take their phones off their dressers, and put them back to the use we intended.
the updated hosts file......cheers....and best wishes.
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
# beginning of critical entries
# 17.112.176.11 gs.apple.com
17.151.36.30 gs.apple.com
17.250.237.43 phobos.apple.com
17.149.240.65 albert.apple.com
#17.112.200.65 albert.apple.com
# end of critical entries
