iPad air booting problem!

The steps for my solution are listed below. It's an attempt at a workaround to my specific problem and your mileage may vary. Please try this before you return your iPad to save the poor employees some time:

1. Connect the iPad to your computer with the power off, hold the Home button down and plug it in. Once you see the iTunes logo you can release the Home button. You are now in Recovery Mode.
2. Restore the iPad to factory default with iOS 7.0.4
3. Restore from your backup.
4. After it reboots, complete the startup settings to get to the home screen. The iPad will start syncing apps.
5. While the apps are syncing, add all the passwords to iCloud, AppStore, Gmail and Facebook that it requests.
6. Last, but not least, go to iCloud settings, tap your Apple ID at the top and put in your password.
7. On that screen I enable iCloud Keychain.
8. Once that is completed you should be able to reboot the iPad without any troubles

If you are taking the iPad fresh out of the box then do this anyway. It's only going to take a little bit longer before you can get started.

For more information about my scenario please read on.

I received my iPad Air 64GB Wi-Fi yesterday and restored from an iPad 3 backup. New one had 7.0.3 and iPad 3 had 7.0.4. It all worked quite well. Added iCloud, AppStore, Gmail and Facebook passwords and it was all ok. I went to sleep, woke up to a black screen. Neither the Home nor Lock buttons did anything. I hard reset holding both buttons and it went into a boot loop. Apple logo would show then it would show the throbber (rotating circle) and it would reboot and repeat over and over.

I plugged it into my Mac and opened Xcode to look at the log file it was generating. The first segfault was syncdefaultsd followed by a failed system call used to retrieve iCloud Keychain (SOSCloudKeychainSynchronizeAndWait). I have the log file saved and am happy to email it to someone at Apple if they contact me directly.

Thanks for your input Sammyspets. This sounds like a lot extra work for fixing an issue with an ipad thats just suppose to work. You would think Apple would have fiqured out a fix, work around or whatever before now. Its doubtfull they really care. Just interested in selling.

I bought my iPad Air (32GB Wi-Fi model) on November 12^th and had no issues until today. I just experienced the reboot issue firsthand on my iPad while listening to iTunes Radio. It was working fine, playing a song, when I heard a small popping sound. I glanced at the screen and saw that it was rebooting (or so I thought). What it did was turn itself completely off after it displayed the Apple logo (that's why I thought it was rebooting). I pressed the Home button and nothing happened. So I pressed the power button, still nothing. Only when I pressed and held BOTH the Home and power buttons simultaneously for about 5 to 10 seconds did my iPad finally boot up. A little bit scary for a new iPad...😮

I'm having the same problem. Bought my Ipad air 128Gb Wifi on Sat 16th Nov, today it twice showed the symptoms described in this post. Hope they sort it out soon as apart from that I love my new Ipad.

I got mine 1st IPAD Air (128G, WiFi+3G) on 11/16 and found the same problem (push&hold start button --> Show Apple Logo -> Show logon screen for only ~0.5 second --> black screen). Not happy with the problem, so I returned the unit to the store on 11/18 for an exchange for a new one to try one more time. The same problem occured on the 2nd one again. Frustrated by the seemly lack of quality control by Apple, the unit has been returned to the store for a refund this time. The store staff does not seem even aware of the problem.

tooeasy: A bug like this looks really huge to the non-developer yet the bug is very small, hard to test for and easy to fix once you find it. My guess is they didn't put in an automated test case testing an upgrade (which works fine btw) then to sleep the device for several hours before trying to wake it again. The "several hours" part of the test case is most likely why they didn't have it.

CA-Joker: I don't think your issue has the same cause as mine. It sounds like yours was started with a bug in either iTunes Radio or something it depends on in iOS. E.g. bug in a sound device driver. If it was a problem with a sound device driver the bug may have placed the device itself in a bizarre state causing the reboot to freeze.

Think2: Your post looks like spam. It's quite normal for iOS devices to power up that way. You didn't mention that it froze or what steps you needed to take to get the device to respond.

UPDATE: The fix I tried worked for me. My iPad is now functioning normally! If you are having a boot cycling problem where the device boots, you see the Apple logo and then it reboots again then try my steps. It may even work for other issues and the steps I provided are what you should try before returning the device.

SammySpets: As have been described by most folks, we need to push the Home or "Start" button to bring back the logon screen after the screen became blank.

BTW, the point brought up by Tooeasy is interesting: Is this "problem" really a problem? or is it intentionally designed for the device to work that way (to prevent unintenall turning on the Ipad)? After all, other than the "problem" described, I would agree that the IPAD Air is a pretty good tablet.

Think2: I'm going to disregard your posts. They smack of spam.

Well at least I'm not alone 🙂 ! Just unboxed and started to set up my daughter iPad Air 32 Gb when things went wrong! Half way through the set up bang! Screen went very quick blue in a sliding motion from top to bottom, then it went black, the apple logo apeared and the after a few goo seconds the slide bar screan apeared.I managed to finish the set up and this problem happenes avery 2-3 min, if I run an ap or using the safari or in the settings menue etc. Considering the price we pay for this I think Appel shoulc compensate us all with an extra iPad of the same model FREE! No excuse!

Sorry to hear about your problem. Seems more and more issues are showing up with the new Air. Anyway, don't count on Apple giving you anything free. Matter of fact, don't even count on Apple fixing any of these issues anytime soon. Assuming they knew about these issues and released the pad anyway tells me there isn't going to be a quick fix. I guess they fiqure an Apple working 80% of the time is still better than anything else out there. JMO

I started this post and since that point, I was contacted via email from a seems like a level II or anyway a layer up of tech support. She asked if I could send my unit in(because of the boot/sleep issue) for their engineering team to diagnose.

I said no problem but I don't think they will have to look hard to find one doing it. I thought they would be abundant. She said I'll get back with you then. About 5 days later she emailed saying sending my unit in would not be necessary, they had airs to test.

I do find it hard to believe this issue was unknown at launch. I find it just as hard to believe they would release units at launch with either wide scale or complete problems of this nature. Just simply don't what to think.

But when I first called in with the issue, I was offered a FREE smart case. I have experienced this level of generosity from Apple before. Several times, once they sent me a new battery free of charge for Powerbook and told me to keep the old one. $100 gift at retail. I would rather have a smart cover instead, so they sent that.I have been a good customer over the years. Yes, they can afford it. But they did it and most companies wouldn't.

I think of them as having much class. I guess just like anyone or any company, there might be times when they seem to abandon that philosphy.

I have timed how long does it take until the next reboot and it is exactly 3min 10 sec.