How do you remove a locked iPhone configuration profile?

Question

How do you remove a locked iPhone configuration profile?

A while ago I rolled out a configuration profile to my company's iPhones and for added security I made it so that it could only be removed via the iPhone Configuration Utility. I now want to remove the old profile and install a new one however I have since upgraded the iPhone Configuration Utility and can't now remove the profile.

Is there a way to remove the profiles from the handsets without losing any data on the phones? A number of other forums have suggested taking a backup of a handset, resetting it to factory settings and erasing all content and then restoring the backup to the handset. When I try this the old profile comes with the backup so I'm back to square one. Can anyone help?

iPhone 4

Posted on Jan 21, 2014 8:45 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

K. Saddler

Level 1

8 points

Jan 21, 2014 9:03 AM in response to Budget Pack Ltd

Hi,

There is a solution to this but it's a bit long winded and you need to have a spare iPhone available

What you need to do is:

Erase all content and settings on the spare handset so you have a like new iPhone that doesn't have a configuration profile installed
Take a backup of the user's iPhone that has the profile you're trying to get rid of
Restore the backup of the user's iPhone to the spare iPhone
Check that the spare iPhone now looks like the user's iPhone and go to Settings > General and make sure the profile hasn't come across with the backup
Take a backup of the spare iPhone (which should have the content of the user's iPhone minus the problematic profile)
Erase all content and settings on the user's iPhone
Restore the backup of the spare iPhone to the user's iPhone
Check that the user's iPhone now looks like it did before and when you go to Settings > General you should see that problematic profile has disappeared

Sounds confusing but it does work and saves the user losing all their photos, music, texts, voicemail etc.

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