I can not restore because I can not turn off Find my Iphone

Follow the steps above to remove it from the account, but then

"After the device has been removed from the account, turn it off by pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button located on the top right side of the device. Then restart your device and proceed with device setup as you would normally. "

See this tech note for the official statement: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4515

If you go to iCloud.com/find and login, you will be able to remove the phone from your iCloud account. That should allow you to then restore the iPhone as needed to resolve the issue. Hope this helps!

Well, in the end I found out that every time I connected to the Mac to which the iPhone was synced, the "iPhone disabled" screen was dismissed and I got a few more tries before it was disabled again. Eventually I figured out the right passcode.

And now on to other iOS 7 bugs... 😟

This happened to my phone, which has a broken power button as well, so I could not put it into DFU mode to restore it.

BTW when you ask Siri to turn off "Find My iPhone", she plays dumb.

I plugged into computer and went to iTunes, backed it up. Then for safe measure I used Image Capture to get all photos off. I logged into my account at iCloud, erased the phone (takes like 30 seconds tops) and THEN "Removed it from the Account". It lit up immediately and I restored it from the back-up.

Thank you and a Baba Booey to you all!

And just to make sure, the situation you were fixing was that you had a device that had been restored, but was not allowing the restore to continue without the Apple ID and the password that the device was Activation Locked to, correct?

Can you check a couple of things now that you have the device restored?

Is it your Apple ID that is now signed into Settings>iCloud?

Is Find My iPhone turned on in iCloud Settings?

Cheers,

GB

Yes. Exactly. The Apple ID was an old account that doesn't exist anymore (both as an email and an Apple ID) so there was no way to verify it. I followed the directions on the link tomerbar posted and I was able to restore my phone. Once you restore it, you set it up as a new phone (and put your current Apple ID in) or from a backup that is linked to an iCloud Apple ID that works.

My current Apple ID is now in Settings>iCloud.

My current Apple ID is now being used for Find My iPhone.

Hope it works for you as well.

Oh....OK, so the device was Activation Locked to an old version of your Apple ID. OK, that makes me feel better. Since it was essentially the same Apple account that was logged into Find My iPhone, it was just a matter of getting it to forget the old version of the ID.

Great - that's good to know, and makes me feel much better about Activation Lock.

Also, this is a great alternative to be aware of for others who are locked, but only because the version of the Apple account ID that is signed in, is an obsolete version.

Did I understand that correctly?

Cheers,

GB

I had this problem, with iTunes complaining Find My Phone was not turned off when it was turned off on my old phone. The solution turned out to be turning it off on the new phone when attempting to restore to it.

Same problem here.

This is ridiculous! In the end it's so "safe" I can't get to it anymore. Even if I have the computer to which it syncs, even if I have the iCloud account credentials... Unbelievable.

Are there any workarounds to this at all?

I have just upgraded to ios7 and cannot restore the backup since it says that Find my iPhone must be turned off first. However I am stuck in Connected to ITunes and cannot get into settings to turn it off. Help it is driving me mad

Just tried my iCloud.com account - there's nothing in there to remove a device from the account. All I get is Play Sound, Lost Mode or Erase Phone.

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I have the same problem, I was able to remove my device from my account using the "Remove from account" link on the bottom:

However - I am still getting this message of "Find my iphone must be turned off..." so I can't restore my iphone and I am locked out of it. Did anyone solve this?

Same problem here. There doesn't seem to be any way to deactivate it.

You will have to Erase it i believe.

This is the only way I got to restore: http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/DFU_Mode