ANY ONE KNOW WHAT IS ERROR 3 IN ITUNES WHEN I TRY TO RESTORE IPHONE 5 TO IOS 7 IT STUCKS IN THE END AND AFTER 30 MIN THIS COME OUT "UNKNOWN ERROR 3" CAN SOME ONE HELP ME PLZ

Dear Kenneth,

May be it is crazy but it is really working. I have tried all recovery methods that I knew but I saw your post for this and now it is working..many thanks for your sharing this information..

Thank you sir. The freezer method worked for me. You are a genius!

had iPhone 4S restore issues, switching from error 1and 3 After upgrading to ios 8.

The freezer method allowed me to get past the factory restore mode, then I restored from my iCloud backup with no issues.

This method should be more visible!

same story for me.. iPhone 5 suddenly went to Searching.... Called Genius Bar, was told back up and restore. Phone would not finish restore. Stuck at the very end with the error 3. After 2 days of trying everything suggested in this thread failed, I took it in to the Apple Store. Was told the Motherboard was bad and they could not fix it. Yes, they said they could NOT fix it. Went home and called Apple Support. They took five minutes looking into the events of my phone and said I could send it in to be repaired for a small charge of $279. I am at my wit send with this. Can't even trade it in towards the 6 because it won't power up to home screen.

Hi fullmob,

Try doing the Restore with the device still in the freezer. Also, prior to putting back into the freezer fir a full hour with the device fully off, remove your sim, use a pencil eraser to clean the gold metallic contact points, then replace the sim into the phone.

Wow, I am seriously ****** at Apple.

I own over 10 Apple products in my household, from iPhone to iPad to Macbook Pro to iMac to Mac Pro. And from now on I will not buy an Apple product again.

My iphone 4s failed a few month ago (was used by my daughter) after an update. No more WLAN connectivity although everything was working fine before. Apple refused to help me and explained it was a hardware defect (yeh, I am sure thats why everything worked right before the update).

Now I wanted to update my Wife´s iPad 3 with 8.0.2 (coming from iOS 7) and got the dreaded Error 3.

Cant restore, no matter what. I even tried the freezer trick but it won´t work.

I am so mad, the device was working perfectly fine until I clicked on the **** update button. It started downloading, started updating and at the end showed me a "Connect to iTunes" sign. I assume, now after warranty and Apple Care is over, Apple will tell me again, that its a "hardware" defect. Weird enough that these defects always seem to happen at the time of an update. Everything worked fine before, wireless, 3G, not a single problem.

Now I am left with a brick.

Thanks Apple for nothing.

I wonder what will happen with my Mac Pro once warranty is gone....

Hi ,

I can understand that your device may not had any hardware issues earlier.

But it has a hardware problem now-in otherwords I can say that 'Firmware

update bricked the hardware' which is quite common in chip level

programming.

But as far as I have heard, this happens most commonly among people who had

Jail broken their device in the past or had replaced some hardware

components with non genuine apple parts. Is your device falling under any

of these categories?.

Thanks

On Sun, Sep 28, 2014 at 2:11 PM, Apple Support Communities Updates <

Hi, I'm from Portugal and my iphone is an Iphone 5 from UK.
I'm having the same trouble and I can't restore my iPhone 5... I've tried several times the freezer way and nothing, still gets stuck on the beggining of "installing the firmware on the iPhone" and after that error 3. I've already gone to apple store and they cannot repair the phone without autorization from apple.

Please some help? I've a brick right now and I don't know what to do with it 😟😟😟

Btw sorry for my bad English.. :/

Your English is very good!

If you've left your iPhone in the freezer for 60 minutes AND done the Restore while the iPhone is still inside the freezer and your phone still has Error 3, you will not be able to fix your iPhone. It will stay a 'brick' I am sorry to say.

Your best bet is to show this thread to an Apple Genius and hope they take pity on you and will give you a free or deeply discounted refurbished unit.

Good luck!

Thank you for the freezer tip!

When I upgraded my iPad 3 from iOS to iOS 8 it bricked with the unknown error 3 message. Tried different cables and Windows 8 computers with and without antivirus enabled with no success.

Ended up taking the iPad to the Apple store in Spokane WA where they plugged the unit into a MacBook Air and it updated with no problems.

Back home in Florida when I attempted to update to iOS 8.02 the dreaded error 3 came up again and nothing I tried would work to get the iPad to restore.

Since the iPad was out of warranty I figured that the freezer tip was worth a try. After 1/2 hour in the freezer I set the iPad on a ziploc full of icecubes and tried again. It worked!

Thank you for all your efforts in proving help with this problem!

Having a similar problem with my iPhone 5s on sprint. My phone started Searching for a Sprint signal yesterday afternoon while it wasn't being used. I had put 8.0 on it a few weeks ago. I didn't do 8.0.1 because of huge problems. So I called Sprint and they had me go and restore it, which got me stuck in the loop and I googled the problem and ended Up here. The freezer trick didn't work. Trying again with phone on a ziploc bag of ice. Fngers crossed.

Didn't work. Still stuck. Tried to force a restore of 8.0.2 ipsw from a manual restore via iTunes and that didn't work (said it was incompatible, downloaded it twice to make sure it wasn't corrupt), and tried to do the 7.1.2 and that wasn't compatible either.

I'll try downloading the 8.0 one more time on my wife's MacBook in one last ditch effort, then I'm selling it back to gazelle for $75 as "not working" and I'll just go get a new one tomorrow.

The out of warranty repair on a 5S is around $250 says the Apple website. An upgrade to a 6 using a family member's upgrade on the account will be $199.

Here's my log. Seems like a baseband issue for me too:

[14:44:52.7449] <Restore Device 0x60000013b260>: operation 19 progress 100

[14:44:52.9155] amai: AMAuthInstallBasebandHandleUpdaterStatus: commandAccepted: NO

[14:44:52.9162] amai: AMAuthInstallBasebandHandleUpdaterStatus: outputDict: <CFBasicHash 0x618000474100 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{type = mutable dict, count = 9,

[14:44:52.9162] entries =>

[14:44:52.9162] 0 : <CFString 0x61800043b780 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{contents = "CertHash"} = <CFData 0x6180002512e0 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{length = 32, capacity = 32, bytes = 0x<<<<<<<<ICCID>>>>>>>924d38ecceff ... <<<<<MEID>>>>>18}

[14:44:52.9162] 1 : <CFString 0x61800042e480 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{contents = "CertID"} = <CFNumber 0xd3da574237 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{value = +3554301762, type = kCFNumberSInt64Type}

[14:44:52.9162] 2 : <CFString 0x61800042b220 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{contents = "ChipID"} = <CFNumber 0x6f20e137 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{value = +7282913, type = kCFNumberSInt64Type}

[14:44:52.9162] 3 : <CFString 0x61800043a700 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{contents = "FusingStatus"} = <CFNumber 0x337 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{value = +3, type = kCFNumberSInt64Type}

[14:44:52.9162] 4 : <CFString 0x61800042a400 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{contents = "Nonce"} = <CFData 0x618000256e00 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{length = 20, capacity = 20, bytes = 0x<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<UDID>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>}

[14:44:52.9162] 5 : <CFString 0x61800062a100 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{contents = "fused"} = <CFBoolean 0x7fff7f4c77f0 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{value = true}

[14:44:52.9162] 6 : <CFString 0x618000453bc0 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{contents = "attemptedToFuse"} = <CFBoolean 0x7fff7f4c7800 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{value = false}

[14:44:52.9162] 10 : <CFString 0x61800062ada0 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{contents = "done"} = <CFBoolean 0x7fff7f4c77f0 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{value = true}

[14:44:52.9162] 11 : <CFString 0x61800042d880 [0x7fff7f4c6f00]>{contents = "ChipSerialNo" XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX

[14:44:52.9162] }

[14:44:52.9162]

[14:44:52.9732] device returned CFError with code -1

[14:44:52.9744] dumping CFError returned by restored:

[14:44:52.9754] CFError domain:AMRestoreErrorDomain code:-1 description:failed to update device firmware

[14:44:52.9761] CFError domain:AMRestoreErrorDomain code:-1 description:ramrod firmware update failed

[14:44:52.9767] CFError domain:RamrodErrorDomain code:1004 description:update_baseband: failed to perform next stage

[14:44:52.9774] CFError domain:BBUpdater code:3 description:Failed creating a communication transport to baseband.

[14:44:52.9781] Sending acknowledgement that final status was received

[14:44:53.1154] Restore completed, status:3

[14:44:53.1154] Failure Description:

[14:44:53.1154] Depth:0 Error:AMRestorePerformRestoreModeRestoreWithError failed with error: -1

[14:44:53.1154] Depth:1 Error:The operation couldn’t be completed. (AMRestoreErrorDomain error -1 - Failed to handle message type StatusMsg)

[14:44:53.1154] Depth:2 Error:The operation couldn’t be completed. (AMRestoreErrorDomain error -1 - failed to update device firmware)

[14:44:53.1154] Depth:3 Error:The operation couldn’t be completed. (AMRestoreErrorDomain error -1 - ramrod firmware update failed)

[14:44:53.1154] Depth:4 Error:The operation couldn’t be completed. (RamrodErrorDomain error 1004 - update_baseband: failed to perform next stage)

[14:44:53.1154] Depth:5 Error:The operation couldn’t be completed. (BBUpdater error 3 - Failed creating a communication transport to baseband.)

On a Mac, you go to finder, hold the Alt/Option key, and click Go on the top menu bar, then Library, then Logs, then iPhone Updater Logs. The last couple lines are what you need. This'll have the error code as well as the progress it made.

Hi everyone,
Right now I'm so dawm happy. I was trying to fix error 3 almost for 3 weeks and no success. Yesterday I loose all the love that I've had by my iphone 5 and tried the freezer metod not for 40 minutes, but for 12 hours. Today I woke up with no hope. Grabed the phone and put it restoring once again and PLIM "Hello" screen appeared. Sorry for my english ahaha, but just to say that right now you have a brick in your home, and you don't loose anything by leaving the phone 12 hours on the freezer. But be carefull, put the iphone in a box with rice envolving him.

Just want to say that I tried the freeze method for quite a few hours one night and only got changes to the error number. I then wrapped the phone in Saran wrap and left it in the freezer for a couple of days. I left the cord attached. I then put the phone in a freezer bag and put the whole mess in a bowl of ice and coarse salt.

Then I tried the recovery again. At first the phone didn't show up on the USB list, but eventually it did. At first it said the battery was low. After a few minutes it showed up in iTunes, and the recovery worked the first try.

Then it said it had to cool off before using! Odd. After it warmed up to room temperature I was able to boot it. But it needed to be activated. I was able to connect it to my WIFI, but the activation failed, saying the Apple server couldn't be located. The Apple website said the activation server was OK. I took a wasted trip to the Apple store, and was told the wait was three hours to see a tech.

I came home and plugged it back in to iTunes. For no particular reason, it asked for the appleid and password. This caused a lot of problems, because it was set up with a throwaway appleid. I eventually was able to reset the password via the website. After much tearing of hair, the phone activated. It is now restoring from a six-week-old backup. I'm crossing my fingers.