iTunes asking for backup password???

Guys, this is real nightmare! I faced same problem: never set encryption password but it asked for the password at restore. By that I locked my photos and videos for more than a year. I thought better about Apple. Such a stupid bug!

I did not believe it is possile to restore. Tried many passwords, real case and lowercase, as suggested: my current Apple ID password, my windows login password, all the passwords I use now on my memory. But nothing worked!

Eventually I found the solution! This is my old password from Apple ID! I changed my Apple ID password some time ago because I forgot it. Now I searched my notes and found 2 old Apple ID passwords. I tried both and the last one before the current on has fit! I did not convert it to lowercase, just used it as is.

So hopefully this should work for everyone of you, provided that you DO remember your previous Apple ID password. Otherwise I am sorry..

Ok, I was shocked to see I had set a password to my backups and after trying dozens of possible passwords I realized that it was the password of the computer where I am, but not the latest updated password, one that I had set about 1 year ago... strange...

Either way: my recommendation is to try ALL passwords that you used before to access to your computer's session where your iTunes is installed in (mine was an iMac).

Good luck to all

Unbelievable! The password to restore my ipad backup ended up being my itunes password without the numbers. I have NEVER used this password before, so it is incredible that this worked. Am shocked and amazed and how it could have defaulted to this. Crazy Apple

Forget trying endless passwords & wierd fix ideas and just do this:

1. Disconect your USB cable from the computer to your iDevice
2. Sign out of your iTunes account in your computer
3. Connect your USB again back to your computer
4. Sign in again with your I tunes password
5. Exit iTunes
6. Open Safari / Preferences / Privacy and clear the apple.com cookie
7. Restart iTunes and connect your iDevice
8. In iTunes click on Devices (choose yours) / Summary Tab / Backups section / then click "Restore Backup" and choose the correctly dated backup
9. If checked, UNCHECK the encryption box and enter your AppleID password at the prompt
10. If the encryption box isn’t checked, check it and create a new password (just use your AppleID password for consistency), then uncheck that same box (which will prompt you for your newly entered password)
11. Finally click "Restore Backup" and choose the correctly dated backup

Roscoe Eugenius

I visited the Apple Genius bar with a problem with my iphone 5C camera. They couldn't fix so replaced the phone. I backed up the iphone onto my Mac at the Genius bar before they swapped the phones. We did not select encryption when doing the back up, but when I tried to restore, I was asked for a password. The Genius guys suggested I try my Apple ID and passwords associated with the phone, but none of these worked. They apologised, but said there was nothing they could do.

After trying lots of different passwords over the last 2 weeks, I started trying options suggested on this thread. My previous Apple ID (from about 6 months ago) worked. Hope this works for others too as I know how frustrating this problem is.

Good luck

yes, you can tell it to setup as a new iphone. You'll be missing your app data, text messages etc.

Then you can setup what you want synced.

You don't have to delete the backup. If you set it up as new, you can go back try restoring from backup later.

That is what I did initially since I had to go out. Then when I came home again, I tried more passwords by initiating another restore.

My iPhone, iPad, and iPad 2 all had different passwords. They all seemed to be based on when I created that device. My iPhone was a password from ages ago, I have a 3GS.

My iPad was an old password I used on my iMac. And on my newly purchased iPad 2 was my itunes password.

So keep trying passwords. I don't recall ever setting up to use encryption, but apparently I did.

I tried everything too and found ot was the very first password i used on the Iphone when i first set it up. Yes - very silly that this would be the case. Apple tut tut. I tried pin, sim pin, current itunes password and luckily i remembered th first password i tried. Good luck 🙂

Just a hard a long conversation with applecare about this problem and they can't help at all.

But..... whilst thinking about why and what this process is doing, I remembered that when I orginally backed up my phone I added a password to the backup ..... this is the password that is needed. so the 1234 or 0000 or even your login password is not good unless its the original password you assigned to the backup.

Mine is restoring nicely now. Good Luck remembering that password you added all that time ago.

HI guys,

Apple really screwed it up this time. After hours trying all solutions posted by friends in this forum, I tried Elcomsoft software and it worked. You just have to install the demo version in your pc and open it. When you click on file, the backup of your iphone will appear by defaul. Click on it and you will see that it starts looking for the password. In my case, it was "k" (this is really weird, what a bug that Apple got!), so after introducing k as password, the restauration was done. Some warning: when it finished, there was a message indicating that there had been some error but all the invormation (contacts, books, podcasts, etc.) was back in my phone again. Itunes was saying that wanted to install a new backup copy but I ignored that because I knew I had the good one (thanks God!). Everytime I plug the iphone again it says that I need to continue with the restauration but I ignore it (click cancel). I guess in a few days when I'm certain that everything is back to normal I will click "delete backup" so the message is not prompted again but for the time being I will keep it there, just in case.

I hope this helps you guys. I will make a formal complain to apple asking for a compensation for all the trouble I've gone through these days because of a stupid bug.

Leonardo

Well after beating my head against the wall for hours and hours...I started trying the same things again.

And the password that worked was a password that would have been set when I added this phone to our corporate Exchange system. It's also a password that I know very well and tried at least half a dozen times yesterday afternoon.

It worked at about 1AM, so perhaps this backs up the above comment from that the server was overwhelmed...which should not be the case. If that is true, I hope that as things get less busy, this issue ceases to come up.

Good luck to you.

After countless hours of trying to remember all my passwords, someone wrote to try my commonly used passwords (alot of them have numbers attached) and just enter it without the #s attached.... it worked!

Funny because I dont remember ever using this particular password without a number ever ever ever before....

thank you apple for this ******** back up system.

I had the same issue a couple of hours ago, and I was going crazy trying to find the right password. iTunes password, pin, and any other password I had ever used did not work. I read and tried most of the remedies discussed in this thread, short of disconnecting in the middle or deleting the backup. Nothing.

Then I tried a password that I had as user login on my work PC. And it worked.

I never sync my iPhone with my work PC. I only did that once. And it was the last time my iPhone was synced.

I have never used that password anywhere else, and it has been changed on my work PC since.

So without a doubt, it is the user login password of the machine that you last synced your iPhone on.

Worked for me. And I know it is weird. Good luck.

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.

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!!

Hi everyone! i dont know if anyone has figured this out yet but i just solved this problem in about 10 seconds! it only works if you still have your old iphone. i recently had to get a replacement iphone 4s. when i went to back it up from itunes, it told me the software on the new phone was out of date, and needed to be set up as a new iphone, updated, and then restored. Whatever, no problem. When i did all that and i went to back up all my settings, memory, etc. from my last iphone, it asked me for a password i never set, or asked for. after freaking out for a minute, i found this forum and saw that one person said it was their old phone password to unlock the screen. I have never set that either, so i was even more confused.

What you need to do is: take your old iphone and create a password to unlock the screen. if you already have a password, that should be the one to backup your phone. then, plug in your old phone to itunes, and change the encrypted backup password. the old password should now be the password to your screen. this way, you have a new password that youre aware of. you may need to play around with screen passwords until one works. It worked for me and my phone is backing up right now! good luck everyone!