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iphone won't turn on past apple logo, can't restore. HELP

All of a sudden tonight, my iphone 4s restarted, but it only got to the apple logo screen, then restarted again. It was doing that repeatedly every 10 seconds or so for the last few hours. The only thing I could do was turn it off completely but only if it wasn't plugged in. If I plugged it into a power source it kept restarting and I couldn't even turn it off. But turning it off didn't do anything anyway because when I turned it on again it just continued doing the same restart cycle. I tried a reset, which had no effect at all. I tried to do a complete restore using itunes, several times. It starts to restore but then I get a message "The iphone (iphone) could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (9)." I made sure itunes and OS X were up to date, restarted my computer, and tried again a few times with the same failed result. And now the phone doesn't continually loop through the apple logo. Instead, after the apple logo, it shows the connect-to-itunes screen (in order to do a restore, but like I said, that doesn't work) and stays on that screen for a minute until it turns off. (But again, if I leave it plugged in, it doesn't stay off. It keeps turning back on and it stays at the connect-to-itunes screen until I turn it off.)


So I don't know what options I have left. As far as I can tell, I have a brick that lights up with an apple logo or itunes logo.


One thing that did happen earlier today that could be related: I tried to update my iphone (I believe I have 7.0.4 and it was updating to 7.0.6?) but something weird happened during the update (can't remember exactly) and I ended up having to restart my phone without it finishing the update. It wouldn't let me update after that, which I didn't really care about, so I just left it with the ios version I had. Then later in the evening this happened.


One other small thing to note (probably insignificant)-- When the phone kept going through the apple logo loop, right before the screen went black and it restarted, the apple logo would grow dim and there was sometimes a horizontal line across the screen, then it went to black.


If anybody has any ideas, please help! It would be much appreciated. I don't want to have to buy a new phone so soon. Apple products are supposed to have a long life span! And I've never jailbroken it or done anything out of the ordinary.

iPhone 4S, iOS 7.0.4

Posted on Feb 22, 2014 11:49 PM

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58 replies

Mar 29, 2017 4:07 AM in response to oregonjoe

To fix my iPhone won't turn on past the Apple logo:

1. Hold the home and power button until your screen goes off.

2. Plug the iPhone into the Mac while holding down the home button until you see the icon telling you to connect to iTunes.

3. Your iPhone will show up in iTunes. From there click restore and when the restore process is done choose setup as new iPhone. Do not restore from backup.

Apr 19, 2017 1:00 AM in response to Hmayyert

Hmayyert wrote:


If your iPhone is stuck on the Apple logo during startup and can't continue past it to the home screen, you may think your iPhone is ruined. That's not necessarily the case. Here are a number of steps you can take to get your iPhone out of a startup loop.

Manybe , you can try using some iphone Manager to solve iPhone stuck at the Apple Logo ,

Got an iphone 6 stuck in boot loop, wont go in dfu mode, plugging into my PC itunes wont recognise it. All ive tried whats been suggested has failed, just stuck with the apple logo for around 20-30 seconds, turns off, 5 seconds later it turns itself back on again to repeat the process.

May 22, 2017 1:20 AM in response to Hmayyert

Hmayyert wrote:


If your iPhone is stuck on the Apple logo during startup and can't continue past it to the home screen, you may think your iPhone is ruined. That's not necessarily the case. Here are a number of steps you can take to get your iPhone out of a startup loop.

Manybe , you can try using some iphone Manager to solve iPhone stuck at the Apple Logo ,

This works fine for me. Thanks for the suggestion.

Sep 17, 2017 10:55 PM in response to Jacquimarriott13

There are three things to try:

1. Holding down the hold (top) and home (bottom) buttons at the same time for about 8-12 seconds.


2. Doing the same thing while the phone is being powered


3. Doing a restore through iTunes: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1414 If your computer is not picking up the phone, try doing step 1 while it is plugged into the computer with iTunes open


The first two will not delete anything. The third will if you have not done a back up recently. If you are on iOS 5 or later and have wifi at home, maybe you have been doing iCloud backups each night in which case you're in luck. Everything will come back to the phone.


<Edited by Host>

Dec 21, 2017 1:57 PM in response to Smmr422

Hi smm,

It tends to do this behavior if your phone updated automatically and/or the update got stuck.

The device needs to have a clean version of the latest sw update on it


Try the following:

- Pull up the latest version of iTunes (12.7.2) on your

updated pc or mac

- plug phone into computer

- whilst phone is plugged in, put your phone in

recoverymode manually

(IPhone 6 versions - hold down home and power

buttons until the iTunes logo comes up. Phone

should go to black screen - Apple logo - black

screen

- iTunes logo, typically. Just make sure the iTunes

screen pops up and that your battery has a good

charge prior to)

- A prompt should appear shortly after on your iTunes

screen stating "There is a problem with this iphone...."

- Click on update

- it will let you know if updating only is not what is

needed and will ask you to restore and update it

That would get your phone out of that mode & working again whilst updating device securely and cleaning your phone up

- only downside to the restore part of it is potential loss of data, but only if you haven't backed up your device


Best of luck. I hope this helps :)

Feb 23, 2014 12:45 AM in response to oregonjoe

Temporarily disable all security software (firewall, antivirus, etc.) on your computer while restoring


Configure your security software

Check your security software and settings, which can block ports and prevent connection to Apple servers during update and restore.

Common errors: 2, 4, 6, 9, 1000, 1611, 9006, 9807, 9844. Sometimes as a result of this issue, a device might stop responding during the restore process.

Feb 24, 2014 12:37 AM in response to oregonjoe

I took my phone in to the Apple store today and after taking it to the back and trying to restore it, the person told me it's a messed up firmware issue and my phone is not salvageable. I really don't understand how everything works perfectly for so long, then all of a sudden one night it randomly decides to become a brick. And the hardware is perfectly fine. Shouldn't any software-related issue be fixable?

Apr 12, 2014 8:56 AM in response to oregonjoe

I am having the same EXACT issue!! This is very frustraiting, annoying, irresposible and completly degrading to the reputation of Apple products. We buy apple products not to keep them for a year or two; their reliability is becoming completly questionable. Seems like we are getting forced to update our old products(products past a year) for new ones in order to deal with these types of issues that arise (usually after a warranty has expired). Very frustrated apple customer here.

iphone won't turn on past apple logo, can't restore. HELP

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