Backup to computer first and sync Apps to iTunes first!
Restore in recovery mode will work, be persistent and retry
Recovery restore challenges
- computer didn't detect recovery iphone, attempted and failed 3 times
rebooted computer then recovery restore worked
- recovery restore was successful, unlocked, and iMessage/Facetime, Find My Iphone, ALL WORKS!
Restore from backup challenges
* Make sure you have plenty of harddrive space!
- have to restore first then restore from backup, i did this incorrectly by restoring from backup and the find my iphone feature got stuck forcing me to recovery restore
- each restore from backup attempt will copy the original backup and create another backup folder. My original was about 10gb, so it copied another 10gb onto my computer's harddrive
- when i restore from backup, my computer ran out of space and errored out/failed.
- I tried again to restore from backup then figured out where the backup data folder was and tried to transfer to external harddrive but not quick enough and failed again.
- finally cleared the extra backup data files and restore from backup was successfull
Missing apps from restore from backup
- Downloaded all my missing Apps from APP store
- I have 300+ apps and there are only 15 screen scrolls, have to organize before apps will populate and load, very difficult to organize now. Wished I had sync Apps first.
Conclusion
This process took me literally 20+ hours to correct and will probably take me few more hours to organize the apps into their respective folders...
At least I got everything to work. Hope this helps!