My Ipad 2 is stuck in recovery mode after the update 6.1

Nothing is working for me so far. My ipad will not connect with iTunes to restore so there is no restore button found.

I am posting to say "me too", because I get the feeling that this is happening to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people and not only does Apple not acknowledge it (via Support or otherwise publicly), but they do not have some kind of fix available after several days of outage. Apparently they have adopted the policy that unless people complain about it then it must be alright. So I'm complaining, and I hope that everyone else who has this problem does too.

The firmware update in p1 that folks refer to here (iPad2,1_6.1_10B141_Restore.ipsw), is exactly the same update that iTunes downloaded for my iPad on January 31, 2013. It is the only firmware update in my iTunes update directory (~/Library/iTunes/iPad Software Updates/) and, in addition to a manual check of byte-sizes of each image, cmp(1) confirms that the two binaries are 100% the same.

Therefore, it is no surprise that the update performed by choosing the manually downloaded image when chosen (via SHIFT on Windows, Option on Mac) fares no better than the default iTunes procedure that uses the same image in its own update directory.

I have verified with a packet sniffer that my Mac is successfully contacting the Apple servers (hosted by Akamai), and that there was no problem with my network, power or any other factor each and every time I have attempted to complete the update to IOS 6.1 on my ipad2. The number of times is well over 30 times during the past three days.

My computer had run out of space earlier in the week so there is no backup image in my Mobile Backups directory, and the updater for 6.1 neither advised nor provided its own backup of the iPad before proceeding. Now I fully expect to have lost all of my recent data, but I would accept that in order to be able to use my product.

This is a genuine bug, it should be quite easy for Apple to reproduce and then acknowledge while they work on a solution. I don't know how this made it past QA but it is now time for Apple to take some action, starting with communication to its ipad2 customers.

My Ipad 2 is in the same state as most on here....stuck in recovery mode. I have tried the iTunes doenload for 3 days now and each time it says the file is corrupt at the end of the download.... I downloaded the file manually but when i hold "SHIFT" and press "restore Ipad" in iTunes It only opens the ZIP folder but wont do anything...

The file I am downloading with windows is "iPad2,1_6.1_10B141_Restore" I save it to my desktop but it saves as a ZIP folder....if I try to locate it by holding Shift key and pressing Restore IPad in iTunes I can not find it. If I unzip the folder I can find it but cant open anything....It just goes form sub folder to sub folder.....Grrrrrr

Any help is appreciated!!!

I'm a bit late on this but i tried the link and it isn't working for me 😟

Does anyobody have an updated one or something so i can get my Ipad running?

It's an Ipad 2 no 3g just wifi.

Thank you.

Can you tell me where to download a good restore file? I can't find one anywhere..

THANKS FOR THE HELP!!

Got our ipad2 working! Thanks for the responses!

Teresaphoto....How did you get yours to work...?

Teresaphoto...How did you get yours to work...?

Buknob can you tell me where i can download that file? will it work on windows?

i got it from Techmaddness on page 1 of this thread.....but it doesnt seem to work...read the first few pages of this thread and you will see.

I read this whole thread and tried his link but when i click it, it takes me to a page that never finishes loading .... so what can i do to get the download?

Ipad working now. Thanks!

I downloaded the iPad2,4_6.1_10B141_Restore.ipsw file on the first thread. Our problem was the ipad would not stay charged. I would charge it in the wall (not via computer) until the connect to iTunes icon would appear (my daughter's ipad was frozen and uncharged. Before I took it from the wall - I pressed and held the home button until I plugged it into my computer. (read this on apple support page). When I had enough charge, finally itunes would locate the ipad. We have a mac computer so I would held option/alt and opened the file but it never would open or locate in itunes. I don't know what exactly I did to make it work but once it restored doing all that it worked. She's having to reload all her apps but that's ok. 🙂

Ryan,

You can find this image on your local hard disk if you take a look inside the following folder "Library/iTunes/Mobile Backups/" you will likely already see this image and do not need to download another one. This is now more difficult to do because Apple decided to hide the Library folder from normal file browsing. The same kind of logic as changing to the "lightning cable", or releasing firmware images without fully testing them and then ignoring the problem instead of working the weekend to get a fix out.

At any rate the success rate of restoring any kind of image through iTunes once you have this problem seems to be very low, I seem to recall only seeing it succeed once (maybe twice) and only for Windows contexts.

If you see a message that says "Extracting software..." after you click on the Restore and Update button, then you already have an image. Then, if your problem is like mine, you'll see a message about the server not being able to be contacted (contrary to my research that shows that at least all of the Apple servers contacted by iTunes do validly and completely respond).

As I completed the last message above I was able to solve my problem, thanks to a previous poster who recommended downloading and installing the Apple Configurator. That worked for me. That's your best best but I think it will only work if you have a Mac.

I'll reply to my original post and wrap it up then.