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

I had to modify the solution as home screen would never show up and restore mode didn't work.

Whenever I was trying to restore from iTunes (in few times I could put it into the restore mode) iPad would start another reboot loop and iTunes would loose iPad again, terminating restore.

1. I unplugged iPad from computer.

2. iTunes still could see it, so I unchecked wi-fi sync as well. (I'm not sure if this is necessary)

3. I did steps 2 and 3 as WildChild7778 did, that is to say I held down home button and reset/ sleep button at the same time, immediately after each time Apple logo showed up.

4. After 6-7 times iPad stopped the continuous boot up loop and the apple logo got stuck up on the screen forever.

5. This allowed me to do a restore from iTunes. I plugged it to computer again and started restore, this time it went uninterupted.

6. I backed up from an old backup.

This made me loose data I had since the last backup, but I got my iPad back...

(I got into this situation when I was trying to do too many updates at the same time. Do them one at a time.)

Ok so there is a much easier solution to this problem. I used my iPad until the battery was completely flat, then when I went to charge it, it got stuck in the never ending reboot loop.

So here's what you need to do to fix this problem.

1. Plug in the charger

2. When the Apple logo appears, unplug the charger

3. As soon as you see the home screen appear, plug the charger back in. You need to do this quickly as the home screen only shows for a split second

4. The loading wheel should appear and shut down the iPad

5. Leave the iPad for a good 30mins or so just to get some battery life into before you start using it again.

🙂

WildChild7778, Thank you SO VERY much for posting this!!!! 🙂 I **think** this actually fixed my problem.

I had the exact problem you described. My IPAD 3 was stuck in the endless restarting / looping cycle and would continually re-start and not charge the battery beyond 1%. Then it would shut down and repeat the process before I could do anything. Your solution seems to have worked, I kept doing the cycle you recommended for about 15 minutes. Anyway, if it did not work, I will update and repost, otherwise consider the issue resolved!! I think you are correct about the cause, my iPad was plugged in and playing a video last night, but the combination of the fact that I plugged it in below 5% and the fact the power consumption must have been large, the iPad died without being properly shut down. Somehow, this must have caused the error. I recently updated to the most recent iOS, I wonder if that had anything to do with it.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling message----I cannot thank you enough. You are the best! 🙂🙂

I tried to restore using recovery mode it give error 4013, also tried the same with iMac with my friend again error.

Let me give little more details:

1. After iOS 8.2 upgrade, 2-3 days often 3-4 times a day it used to restart again and again then will get Home screen.

2. Also at times it happened, it boots again and again left the device as it is then it comes to Home screen.

3. Lastly it did the same behavior but it did not boot up, but keep booting again and again apple logo is shown then restart

4. Tried to get into recovery mode, windows PC error 4013, now in the recovery mode.

My Battery was in good condition, when it happened it was ~80% now may be very less did not charge until now.

I read somewhere in the forum keep re-starting manually again and again, someone said since it did not shutdown properly there is a problem, please help.

The device is 1.2 yrs old ONLY.

Best regards

Prabu

I tried to restore to older version of iOS 8.1.2, I was getting error 3194 - in fact it is able to determine you can't downgrade it means it is able to read version info correctly from Flash something is wrong.

I have a strong feel it can be fixed, but not sure how - please help.

Regards

Prabu

This has also happened to me iPad except it belong to my autistic seven year old daughter! You have to redo the reset process as lined out by wild child , it does work but it takes forever . I would keep thinking it hasn't worked and try to get it to load in losing all charge again. Once I reset ( apple logo hit home button at he same time as off switch hold down for ten seconds ) I did that over and over for almost 40 minutes and finally got enough charge and switched it off. That was three days ago and now it is fine. The full instructions wild child gave are above but they do work , it just takes patience .

Fantastic! Got an iPad working for the school I manage IT for, it is now installing the latest iOS and getting ready to run! Thank you!

Alexis.B's simpler process worked perfectly for my iPhone 6+. I ran low of patience after 2 minutes of charging and powered it up. It had enough juice to become self aware again. Thanks for the save

Ok so there is a much easier solution to this problem. I used my iPad until the battery was completely flat, then when I went to charge it, it got stuck in the never ending reboot loop.

So here's what you need to do to fix this problem.

1. Plug in the charger

2. When the Apple logo appears, unplug the charger

3. As soon as you see the home screen appear, plug the charger back in. You need to do this quickly as the home screen only shows for a split second

4. The loading wheel should appear and shut down the iPad

5. Leave the iPad for a good 30mins or so just to get some battery life into before you start using it again.

WildChild,I went through this process but my iPad refuses to charge when powered down. and if left on to charge,the reboot logo/loop cycle starts all over again. any Ideas what else i can do? Thanks.

rakobernik wrote:

Alexis.B's simpler process worked perfectly for my iPhone 6+. I ran low of patience after 2 minutes of charging and powered it up. It had enough juice to become self aware again. Thanks for the save

Ok so there is a much easier solution to this problem. I used my iPad until the battery was completely flat, then when I went to charge it, it got stuck in the never ending reboot loop.

So here's what you need to do to fix this problem.

1. Plug in the charger

2. When the Apple logo appears, unplug the charger

3. As soon as you see the home screen appear, plug the charger back in. You need to do this quickly as the home screen only shows for a split second

4. The loading wheel should appear and shut down the iPad

5. Leave the iPad for a good 30mins or so just to get some battery life into before you start using it again.

This worked for me as well. I started trying the previous solution from Wildchild for way longer than i had patience for. ;-)

This post is old but recently my daughter's iPad started having a problem like this one and so I found this thread while looking for solutions. I have tried WildChild7778 procedure but to no avail. Even connecting to the laptop to restore from iTunes resulted to nothing, basically because there is no power to the iPad. I reckon the battery is so flat it has no power left. Curiously though, when plugged to a wall outlet , the iPad will exhibit the "loop" as described by WildChild7778 - which is Black Screen...Empty Battery.... Apple Logo....Black Screen.

What I did, and I was able to replicate this, is:

1. PLUG INTO WALL OUTLET, WAIT until the empty battery shows up, then at the first instant the APPLE LOGO shows, PRESS the POWER BUTTON alone and don't let go.

2. NOTICE that the apple logo won't go away now that you are pressing the POWER BUTTON.

3. press now the HOME BUTTON (WHILE STILL pressing the Power button). keep pressing both for 5-10 seconds and try to let go if the Apple logo will stay. If it stays, then,

4. your iPad is now BOOTING UP. (there is a point where the screen has gone black again while booting but after a minute or so, it opened in its home screen.)

With my daughter's iPad, with the screen alive, I learned that IT WAS NOT CHARGING and it still has about 30% battery. She said it turned off while she was using it. Since it was not charging, I unplug the charger, the iPad went dead again. I repeated the procedure above and was successful. this time the iPad went charging.

IT IS NOW FIXED. I hope this helps.

Thank you WildChild7778 for your solution. it worked perfectly for me. I had done step 3 non-stop for ONE hour. when iPad booted finely at end it was a 3% battery power. down side of this is my fingers are sore now 😝

Thanks again!

Thank you so much !!! this worked for me .

I was afraid that my iPad died . It is charging now .

thank you

I had the same problem but took a different approach...

My solution was to *trick the hardware* into staying off until there was enough charge to fully boot. All iPads and iPhones come with a temperature sensor that will automatically shut off an iOS device in extreme cold to protect the electronics. This does not affect the device's ability to be charged while off.

Knowing this I did the following:

1) Placed my iPad in the freezer door for 45 mins

2) With the iPad ice cold and forced to stay *off* thanks to the sensor, I plugged in the charger

3) iPad booted after 15 mins when the temperature sensor felt it was safe to boot

4) When it booted it had 23% power

Hope that helps someone.

Just wanted to confirm the success of trying the freezer method. I tried the other suggestions with no success (however the lack of success might have to do with my Home Button not working all the time), so I moved on to this. And it worked great. Circumstances made it so that once I removed the ipad from the freezer and plugged it in, it sat unattended for almost 24 hours. So when I came back to it, it was fully charged to 100%.