Q: 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

It was restore mode but NOT DFU.

Cup of ice with bag did not work. Not cold enough. Don't not try this as my phone got really wet from the condensation. Next stop is plugged in while in freezer.

I have the same problem..the phone was purchased just 20 days back from Dubai...I don't know what to do since i stay in India and the phone cannot be even serviced in a different country...

The only thing that has worked consistently for people on this thread is FREEZING THE PHONE. I had less luck with mine but give that a shot. I ended up selling my 4S on eBay for $100.

have the same thing... allways either get error 3 or error 3194.... iphone 4s, out of warranty and 2nd user

Greats Thanks for SunshineSinCity

to restore your iphone

1: itunes newest > it's need to downloaded the newest update file in your computer...

if you are in the DFU mode, you need to find some computer already have this updatefile and just update their itunes

2: move file hosts to desktop

3 : cmd > ipconfig[space]/flushdns

4: leave it in dfu
5: restore it > done! Thanks ^^

i did it in many iphone

Message was edited by: Solestyles

more detail if possible

more detail if possible pls SunshineSinCity

My daughter's Iphone 4S finally experienced this error 3 issue last night during an update to IOS 7.1.

She had been experiencing the 'searching' problem on and off for the last month.

The phone is a 'refurb' which I purchased at Christmas, so well out of any Apple warranty.

I have gone through most of the 30 pages of theis thread this morning and hopefully armed with a few ideas to try out this evening. Thanks to the main 'champions' of this thread for their perserverance with Apple.

Interesting to point out to all you unfortunates whose device has just gone out of warranty and maybe you have not managed to resolve this matter.... Sellers of consumer goods within the EU are obliged to guarantee the conformity of the goods with a contract, for a period of two years after the delivery of the goods. Application to 'Small Claims' process costa around £100......

Further to my earlier post, I put the phone in the freezer for 45mins (-22degC) and went through the update twice and the phone updated on the 2nd attempt, so another success for your method. Just waiting to 'activate' it but the server is down.

Thanks for your help.

Hi guys, I'm having exactly the same problem as described by everyone before excepts I get error 1669 instead of error 3.

My iPhone 5S started to say "Searching..." in the morning after charging it all night. I removed the SIM card and it was still saying "Searching...". It didn't realize that there was no SIM inside. I reset network settings, reboot the phone, etc and but it was still on "Searching". So, I decided to do a restore... It's the worst thing I did. It stucks at 66% (aprox) in the iPhone progress bar while restoring and iTunes fails with error 1669. I've never seen error 3. But I have exactly the same symptoms as you described in the 30 pages of this thread.

I followed the "freezer" tip with no luck. I always get the same error. It's weird that error 3 and error 1669 seem to be the same. I read the logs you posted here and compared with my iPhoneUpdate.log's and they seems to be very similar.

I bought the iPhone on October 2013 (it's on warranty but there's no support for iPhone in my country). I updated iOS always via OTA. After 7.1 update I started to have some battery drain problems, so I decided to do a DFU restore to see if this could solve the problem. It was the only update I did to the phone using iTunes. It was successfull. 10 days later I started to experience the problem described above (Searching and 1669 when restoring).

If it helps, I'm posting 2 logs. The first one is when I did a successful restore. The second is one of the many attempts to restore without luck.

_______________

Succesful DFU restore (12 days ago):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c1u38htj8nthzob/iPhoneUpdater%208.log

_______________

Unsuccessful DFU restore (2 days ago to now):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hb5jyieb1rstazx/iPhoneUpdater%205.log

Any suggestion, idea, or whatever will be very appreciated!

Thanks!

....phone would't activate from 'hello' screen....message continually said server was down but this appears to be another glitch or issue, so now back to square one. as I have tried to re-install 7.1 again only to receive code 3 again. Don't think there is any point in 'chilling' the unit again.

....went to Apple store today explaining to them what had happened with my daughters phone during 7.1 install.

Also pointed out that phone was a 'refurb' model, purchased in December, with 90 days warranty, from an internet company. I was not looking for a replacement, I was merely wanting the device to be restored to the 7.0.6 version of IOS as it worked perfectly on this.

I was informed that the device must be faulty and restore to an earlier IOS this was not possible. (There are various reports on the net about the versions of IOS which can be restored as far back as 6.1.3 for the iphone 4s, but apparrantly 7.1 has been designed to prevent this.)

Apple Assistent offered replacement at £159 but wanted to look inside the phone to confirm a serial number. She then withdrew offer once she confirmed there was 'after market' parts fitted inside the phone. ( ....I did tell her it was a refurb....) I told her I was not happy that the update had made the phone useless and if similar was done on a PC, you could at least restore the system to an earlier setting.

This did not cut any ice with the apple assistant. It is my view that this new update (7.1) is not only to kill off 'jail-breaking', but to disable any devices with non genuine parts.

One further enhancement of 7.1, if you had selected 'find my phone' to be switched on whilst using an earlier version of IOS, then the latest update (7.1) locks it out from being reactivated by somebody else .....possibly the reason why I couldn't reactivate the phone on the single occasion when I actually managed to get the update to install.

The learning lessons for me? I should not have bought an Apple device with 'crappy' parts in it because Apple wants me to suffer  all I deserve for doing so. Also, I should not buy any other Apple devices into the future because Apple does not want me to be able to restore any device which has a failed install on an update. I cannot prove that the update destroyed my 12 year old daughter's 'fake' phone (description used by Apple Assistant) because I cannot check to see if it still works on an earlier version of IOS....thank you Apple, you have it all sewn up.

What is this calm

Im gonna try and go as in depth as possible, but its late, sorry if I drone

Alright, My sisters phone had the searching nonsense and Apple support said to move her pics to my pc, then update, and we wound up with error code 3. After looking around, trying everything, and almost trekking out to an apple store, I decided to trust K's( your name escapes me, sorry) 25 years of exp and his freezer method. With the case on, I encased it in a paper towel, in about 1 and 1/2 cups of rice, in a ziplock bag, turned upside down in another one, and in one more for good measure.It didnt work, but the progress bar went to almost the very end, it usually froze right past the center, so I went for round 2. Got to the same place and errored again, so for the thid time, I did the same thing but left it in for an hour and 20 or so min, and when I brought it to my pc, I put it into dfu mode asap, and let it update in the ziplock of frozen/cold rice, with only the case on(its thin and only protects the back, its the kind that has a stand), and it worked! It restored and I decide to just gor for the update without setting it up, and that went thorugh as well, I left it in while it restored the backup and all seems well. Nevermind its updated and was connected fore a few min, then went back to searching...Im done. Im going to bed, thanks for the help.