FIX: IPad turns on and off in a loop during charging, boots to home screen and reboots

This simpler solution did not work for me. Nor did the longer process. I kept shutting it off after the apple logo appeared - for about 30 minutes and my fingers were sore. The home screen would finally come on, but not enough for me to swipe it off. This is a lousy feature of iPads and iPhones. There should be a much easier way to turn it off so that it doesn't keep restarting, draining the tiny bit of battery power and starting the loop over again. I still don't have a solution.

There is another procedure which involves Recovery mode.

1. Hold Home button and without releasing it connect iPad/iPhone to computer with running iTunes.
2. Wait for "Connect to iTunes" symbol on iPad and release home button
3. iPad will enter recovery mode. Don't try to do recovery in iTunes now because it will most likely fail.
4. Unplug iPad from computer and plug it in charger. "Connect to iTunes" should appear again and reboot cycle will stop.
5. Leave it charging for at least 30min.
6. Plug it back in computer and now you can restore it from backup (if you have one) or set it up as a new iPad.
7. Your iPad should be working now.

Thank you so much.After having tried wild child method( did not work for me, after 1 hour) I tried Simon,s method.I live in a hot country so figured I needed to leave it longer in the freezer, one and a half hours.When it came out I put the charger in and the battery icon appeared but that was all.I had to wait another hour of charging before it rebooted.So simple and in my case it worked on an old iPad 2. Thanks a lot Simon, you saved me some bucks xxxxx

This finally worked for me, with a few modifications. Between #5 and #6 I had to do three restore/recoveries with a total of 30 minutes (not 10) of the Sleep/Home button shutdowns. Each time the restored image would boot and then lose power. But it would get farther for each restore. On the third I had enough time to hurry through the setup and managed to shut it down manually with 2% on the battery. It just goes to show that additonal variations are sometimes needed too :-)

Thank you sooooo much! I was playing on my iPad when it randomly shut down and I realized it was dead and trying to boot up. After a few times doing the force restart, it told me to plug the iPad into iTunes to restore it, which luckily for me, worked! I’m really glad you made this or I could be stuck for days without my iPad. Thank you so much.

13/8/2017

I faced the same problem I contact with apple support,,,

what should you do if now working as others says.

1- download last version of iTunse

2- when apple logo appear press and keep holding home and power button until iTunse logo

3- connect your device and update it

bye

Thanks WildChild7778! I finally have my iPad back and running after two hopeless and gloomy days! I only had to do steps one through three because I saw the home screen and I'm monitoring the iPad in the charging process.

Best of Luck, KJG Junior.

WildChild7778 system worked for me. iPad 3.

Cheap iPhone charger was taking forever, so I went and bought a new 2.4 amp charger, and the cycle was consistently quicker. Eventually, the dead battery icon went away, and it cycled straight to the apple icon...

Literally counted 40 times. Right after the empty battery icon disappears, as soon as the apple logo comes up, hold both buttons>let go when the apple disappears. It's like inflating the battery bit by bit, until it can boot the OS all the way up, then immediately swipe off for proper shut down.

Thank you!

Thank you!!! Thank you!!! Thank you!!! My Autistic son's iPad was doing this exact same thing and I was thinking it was toast as well. Following your directions, it WORKED!!!! It's now off and charging. This was a life saver as his iPad is everything to him!!! You saved me from pulling out my hair and having to figure out how I was going to replace his iPad with $0 dollars in the bank!!! Bless you!!!

Thank you Wildchild. After reading all the discussions and forums I stumbled upon this one. Then I read all the replies below. I did step 3 longer than 10 minutes and more than 40 times. This showed my battery on 6%. Then I managed to turn the iPad off as per your instructions. Now n hour n half later my iPad battery is on 32% and the home screen is on. Will leave it charging till it reaches 100%.

As someone else said in their reply - you have to be patient as it really does work in the end. Took me a couple of attempts but I wasn't going to give up so easily.

Thank you ever so much - I really appreciate it. May the good Lord give you success in all that you do.

Thanks for posting this solution. Found this one after trying 3 or 4 OEM lightning cables, apple adapters, connecting to macbookpro, cleaning power port and none of them stopped the reboot loop. apple's knowledgebase suggested it could be damaged power port on ipad. when i was thinking taking it to apple center is the next step, i found this solution. ipad shouldn't be rebooting when it has detected reliable power supply. hopefully this is fixed in 10.x.

I almost had the same prob, my iphone 6 had frozen and i had spent two days wondering what to do! An idea came to my mind that i should search for help on apple website! When i read this i did as recommended by stevejobsfan0123,in response to alcia160 and it immediately worked. I am so grateful to this assistance!

Hello there

I have recently tried to fix an ipad air with a similar issue. It seems to have run out of power and it was not used for about a month. Rest assured it didn't charge anymore even when plugging it in for days (tried all chargers including pcs and laptops). Didn't even start up or indicate empty battery or charging battery symbol. This was until I dug out an old 12W charger I had received with my old ipad 1. About five seconds after plugging it in the apple logo appears and it seems to try to boot up. Five seconds later it crashes into the black screen again. After five seconds it tries to start up again and it follows this cycle endlessly.

I tried pressing the home button and power button to restart it every time immediately after it restarted, but five seconds time is not enough for it to make a difference. I did however now and then get into the "connect to itunes screen" and it would stay on that screen. That is for about 10 minutes where it would crash again. Every time you unplug it it crashes.

Does anybody have an idea on how to fix it? (Like are there stronger chargers and would that make a difference?)

PS: I forgot to mention that I have tried cooling down my iPad and have it charge then. I did so to a temperature of -14 degrees and I tried 1 hour, then two hours and last 10 hours of freezing it and every time I plugged it in it was all happy and tried starting up again being still stuck in the endless cycle. Does anybody know how cold it must be for it not to start up?

How do I thank you?

This worked for me. I did exactly as you said and when I turned on my iPad after 35mins, i had 9% battery then I turned off the iPad to charge.

Thanks once again for this simple and straight forward guide.