Q: Lost Password to iPhone Backup

This is really weird: the same thing happened for my wife's iphone. Exchange account required the encryption password and it was (automatically?) set to the Windows Admin password.

worked like a charm!

thanks

It worked

Hi Everyone!!

I have a suggestion

if you backup on to the icloud on your phone instead of using itunes you can then backup using the phone without using itunes too!!

It solved the problem of not remembering the password

Go in to the back up settings on your old phone and back up to icloud - get your new phone and ask it to restore from your icloud and providing you have wifi it will ask for your apple id and normal password then begin restoring!

happy days

Amanda

Yes, you can keep on backing up forever with iCloud, but going through this procedure doesn't allow you to get over the iTunes password issue. In other words, as long as you are happy for the rest of your life to never have an iTunes backup, you can do this.

If you have a back up regardless what would the issue be not doing so through itunes?

They perform the same function and remove the blocker of the password so I don't see any problem it backs up the same as the itunes one?

Thanks

Amanda

There are lots of reasons you might want to back up through iTunes. One might be that you are out of range of Wi-Fi or of fast Wi-Fi. One might be that iCloud restore is absurdly slow. One might be because you want to keep backups as of various dates, but don't want to fork mountains of cash to Apple for extended iCloud storage.

Hope this helps someone else - after going through every page and suggestion here, it turns out my password was the first password I had set on my mac book pro (as an administrator account). Not the other suggestions I found folks saying: 0000, not 1234, not the first passcode (4 digit) I used on my iphone, not the password for microsoft exchange, not the the other 50 unique and long passwords I have for everything else, etc. What clued me into this was another post page 4 or 5 - someone else discovered it was their windows login that worked, desperate I tried anything, sure enough- my first password for my macbook pro, not current one, worked. wow, mind=blown. FWIW, I never recall setting a password OR my mac prompting me any such thing was taking place. Good luck to y'all, I know how frsutrating this was for me and I work in IT.

Thank you so much for posting this solution. I used a password, that honestly I couldn't replicate again, but was an old one! Thanks again!

This worked for my situation.  I had never set up a password but when I typed my administrator password it worked!  Thanks everybody!

Just thought I would put my two cents in. I backed up my daughters phone, restored it to factory defaults, tried to restore from backup I just created. I DID NOT CHECK THE ENCRYPT BACKUP BOX. As some people would like to insinuate. I am very computer savy and do NOT want my daughters phone backups to be encrypted. That being said after reading all of these, I tried the ORIGINAL iTunes password I used to set up my itunes account that I had when I bought the very first iphone apple sold. (that's right folks I was one of those people) lol. This was before my daughter even had a phone. She was like 8. She never knew this password. Never entered it into her phone. Apple made me change it years and years ago because it was just a simple password and not up to snuff. So the moral of this is, itunes is choosing one of your passwords. Make no mistake it IS one of your passwords. But apparently it can be from anything that you have ever typed a password into. Think outside the box. Hope it helps.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I cannot thank you enough!

For anyone's who's curious, I typed in my previous Apple ID password.

miniphtnb     Nov 11, 2012 7:03 PM 
  Re: Lost Password to iPhone Backup  in response to buckeye89      

  

Like many of you, I swear I didn't set up a password for my iphone backup.  I tried every password possible, and none of them worked. 

 

I stepped away from the laptop and phone, and gave it a few minutes to breathe.  I mean, so I could breathe. 

 

I came back a bit calmer, unplugged the phone from the USB, and reattached it back to the laptop.

 

Once it detected the phone, it no longer asked me if I wanted to use the recovery and did not prompt me for a password.

 

As I type this, it is copying my old apps... and I am praying that all goes well in a few minutes...

 

In summary:

 

1.  calm down

2.  unplug, reattach

3.  pray for patience

Thats exactly the same at mine. I was trying all passwords I can remember, still sure, that I never have set any.

After some web research how to unlock, I was coping the backup folder (8GB) to an external drive to try to unlock it with a windows software.

After coping (15 mintes later) I pluged in my iphone again to my mac ... and magic, it was synching without any request for password.

My dear Apple devs, this evening costs to much heartbeats for me!!!

After trying every password i have ever used for my apple account or anything else that needs a password, I finally decided to try the password I use to log into my mac computer (Adminstrator password) and it worked.Hope this helps someone!

IT IS THE SECURITY PASSWORD THAT WAS ON YOUR PHONE WHEN YOU CREATED THE BACK UP!! IT TOOK ME FOREVER TO FIGURE THIS OUT. WHAT AN OVERSIGHT ON APPLE'S PART. I CHANGE MY PASSWORD ALL THE TIME SO IT WAS LUCK THAT I RECALLED THE CORRECT ONE. GOOD LUCK!