iTunes asking for backup password???

I want to add to this thread, because I had a different scenario from the several pages I read.

On my Mac, I've performed an "early upgrade" with AT&T before that involved upgrading my son's phone and then trading it for my own by calling AT&T back and having them port the numbers differently.

That said, I found that my backup was using my son's phone, because originally, the phone I'm using now was his. The original backup was apparently done while HIS account was associated with this hardware, so it defaulted to THAT password.

Even though the password worked, it told me the backup was corrupt, but it still managed to bring over nearly or maybe all of the things I'd backed up.

I was sooooo frustrated. I hope my solution helps someone else.

Oh, alternatively, we've synced to the same computer with different accounts, so if you've also synced more than one phone or had more than one iTunes account logged into iTunes on your computer, it's possible that the password to one of those accounts is the culprit.

Try that if my earlier suggestion doesn't work.

GOOD LUCK!

Try quiting and re-opening iTunes. It worked for me. Hope this helps. :-)

Try quiting and re-opening iTunes. It worked for me. Hope this helps. :-)

i finally found out my password for backup!

okay i was reading your question then the answers, i DID try my apple ID password but it didn't work. Tip for other people is.. what is the password you ALWAYS use?

i used mine for 5 years and going..(!)

i ESPECIALLY do not remember setting up a backup password. I was soo unsure what to do when upgrading like you did to iOS5 so whenever i was bothered, i would go on iTunes and click backup 4x and transfer purcheses 4x.. i was so curious. i DID tick the backup thingy box, being my curious self.. but the tip is to find out a password you ALWAYS use. I always write down my passwords in a book or computer or my other apple devices. Writing something down helps you remember it, that's why teachers order you to write 'I shall not...' 100 times on the board or paper.

I hope i helped. x

After reading through a couple suggestions, I tried putting in passwords from everything! I didn't even choose a backup password.Turns out, my backup password was a previous password I kept to lock my Iphone!!

I got on computer to add some music to my husband's WORK phone and it said it was due for an update, so I went through the whole process. Backed up paid for apps and pictures, etc. I saw an option to choose encryption and a new password, but I didn't choose it. I was in the same situation as all of you have already described.

OK, so as I'm having a complete panic attack when the password thing popped up. I immediately started searching the web on how to fix it and found this lovely trail of posters in the same shape as me. We low and behold the way I fixed it after trying several of your suggestions was buy choosing the "CANCEL" button instead of entering password! Once I did, the back up resumed on it's own!

It is currently syncing the umpteen million pictures he has on there, but I am praying to the Lord above that it works when it's done with that.

Give it a try...I'll let you know what happens!

Ok, finally got all restored. I was wrong...had to have password, it was just syncing data, apps, pictures, etc.

I will give you all a hint that it was the password I used when we originally set up the phone when he bought it.

Good luck remembering yours 😟

With all due respect, Llenooo_xx you are wrong and lucky. If you would read the hundreds of responses to this thread, you will see that each and everyone of us tried the password we always use. 99%'of the time the correct password turned out to be one we DON'T always use. That's the problem. In my case it was a password that belonged to my middle daughter's Facebook account and my oldest daughter was syncing on a computer that the middle daughter never touched. This is why this. Bug is so ugly, it takes some random password that you may have on,y used once and some times one you have never used with iTunes or your device. Which boggles the mind that apple has not addressed this yet.

This undocumented scenario is just unfathomable. The amount of grief, lost time, and great stress is something to be held against Apple. This is a deep black eye for them.

Yes, I ran into the same problem doing an upgrade to 5.n. Never asked or gave a pw, but required it to restore. What the...

After reading this thread I figured out that the pw was my original pw on the phone. But since that does not seem to always work for everybody, I am thinking it is the pw on your phone at the time you do your first logon to istore, or the first time you sync or something like that.

Good luck to everybody.

Guys !!! I finaly made it! OK, it is obviously a password that we used a long time ago and most of us we dont remember it (as it happened to me). So what i did i got this program Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker and it found my pass in 2 minutes 🙂. Now waiting for Restore to complete . I hope it works for all of you.

PS: Apple you fked it up big time ....

Guys, here is our experience with this bug (and yes Apple this is a bad bug not a bad memory) and here is how we got around it.

My wife recently attempted to upgrade her iPhone to 5.1.1 and iTunes advised her that she would need to do a complete backup and restore process on her iPhone which she agreed to and let it start. So it did the backup, upgraded her iPhone and then when it attempted to restore the backup it halted and asked her for the password for her encrypted backup. As other folks have indicated, she hadn't requested this backup or any other backup in the past to be encrypted, but regardless we could not proceed beyond this point. We tried every combination of password she or I had ever used with no avail. We also spent hours with the Genius Bar folks and the online Apple support folks and received plenty of empathy but no results. You really are left with the impression that this is your fault and that somewhere in your dark past you or someone in your family encrypted a backup with a password.

So we went the Elcomsoft password breaker route which some folks here have used with success. i would like to share my experiences here because I feel I owe this forum a favour and also to make sure you know how to get this software to best work for you ,because even though its very powerful, its not totally intuitive.

First Attempt - We downloaded the Elcomsoft free trial version of the software, told it to run, asked it to go against our iPhone backup file, selected the most recent iPhone backup (btw this wasn't that days but instead was one from 2 weeks ago - another bug Apple) and told it to start. When it starts, it will tell you how long it expects to take and in this case it said 4 hours. As the Elcomsoft software is running it says what its "attack rate" is of approximately 700 password attempts per second and it displays its current attempt every second so you can see it work through the possibilities. In this case, under their "task" I had accepted the default "english dic - no mutations" So with this default it just attacked with standard unicase dictionary words and after about 2 hours it finished with no success.

Next Attempt - I wasn't suprised and decided to look deeper. If you double click on "english-dic" it will open a box showing your selection and displaying the mutations options "disabled". if you click that, you can see that you also have the options of minimal, average or maximal mutations. I chose "maximal" and it in turn advised me that it could take up to 4 days to run this attack! So I quickly backed off from that and chose "minimal" and it in turn advised me that it would take up to 30 hours to run this attack. I chose this solution, but before running it on my wife's backup, I ran it on my iPad's backup on a separate computer where I intentionally protected it with a password of "1234". Off it went, and you could see it apply different combinations of numbers, letters and special characters. In was kind of fun to see and in less than 2 minutes, it found the password and came back showing 12**. If you want to see the ** characters, you then need to buy the application at around $80 and get a registration key.

Successful attempt - So with that little success under my belt, I started the "minimal" attack on my wife's computer and her iPhone backup. And 25.5 hours (it said it took 91,871 seconds) later it was successful and showed the result as Pr*****. So at this stage, you could try variations of Pr and 5 characters, but since we had never encrypted our backup and also never used a password beginning with Pr, and because Elcomsoft was going to save us a lot of grief if we had to leave the iPhone at factory settings, we elected to register the software and proceed with payment. Success!! Her phone is now on 5.1.1, all her application data is in place and we have a happy household and I am a hero!

Learnings - #1 - Encrypt your iPhone/ iPad backup intentionally with a password you selected vs. letting some bug somewhere select it for you. #2 - Make sure all your important passwords such as your PC or MAC signon and your online banking software are secure and complex, because this type of software is very powerful and there are a lot of bad guys out there that will use it for the wrong reason. Elcomsoft has provisions to protect it from being used for the wrong purpose, but others might not. During those 25.5 hours, I estimate it attempted over 64 million attacks! #3 Elcomsoft is in Russia! So it will take a few hours to process your payment since they don't seem to work 24/7. So kinda of scary, but it worked.

Thanks

Fred

I had the same problem and mine was just the 4 digit password you set up to unlock your phone...

my password was just my itunes password without the first letter capitalized

This is sick!

I don't know how many hours I have been sitting talking to Apple Support (Sweden) and they have "never" heard about this problem. It's a bug! These many people havn't lost their minds. I can't belive they havn't heard about it. It's just crazy to me.

I'm from Sweden and wonder am I the only Swede that this has happened to or are just no one reporting it to Apple. This is something they need to get fixed. I told them that. It is crazy how this thing can happen. You do back-up to prevent data from disappearing, and with this bug, the complete opposit happens.

It's just totally crazy to me that this still is happening to people. I mean the original post is from 12 Oct 2011. It is 1 Aug 2012 now and it has happened to me.

I can't belive it really

Still working on geting the password...after two days...

Thank you everybody in here that you exist and for your support!