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

Ok, after having my ipad 2 3rd Generation for about a year, its bombed out on me,playing on it until battery drained. Didn’t think anything of it, plugged into charge thinking it would be charged by the morning. This didn’t happen.


It was stuck on the apple sign, booted to home screen and switched off again due to low battery. Continued on this loop for the whole day……


I searched the internet and it seemed all doom and gloom that I would need to by another one. Then I stumbled upon a forum where the advice so far has worked for me.


The reason why it gets stuck in a loop is because the IPad was not shut down manually, so therefore keeps trying to boot up soon as it has some battery power. Problem is, its gone beyond a point and now and there isn’t enough battery life to boot to main or home screen after apple logo.


The remedy is quiet simple, follow these steps to get the ipad to home screen to power it down so it has sufficient time to charge up and boot normally and get off the endless loop.


  1. Plug into wall socket to get it charging.
  2. Wait until the apple logo appears and wants to boot up.
  3. QUICKLY hold down home button and reset/ sleep button at the same time until it reboots.
  4. Release buttons now. should now power down and reboot
  5. Repeat step 3 at least 30 to 40 times which is about 10 minutes in duration everytime you see the logo appear on the screen.
  6. Now Let IPad boot up fully, should see home screen with about 2% battery life
  7. QUICKLY hit the rest/ sleep button down for about 2 to 5 seconds.
  8. Swipe the screen to when slider appears to switch off the ipad.
  9. This will now power down the IPad which now will not reboot by itself so it can now charge without any interruption’s.
  10. Allow battery to charge for a least an hour or two without trying to put it on.
  11. Switch the IPad on
  12. You should now have about 10 to 20% battery Life
  13. Power it down again by holding the reset/ Sleep button down again and swipe the screen to power down, let it charge fully to 100% now which will take few hours
  14. Enjoy your IPad again 🙂 🙂


Lesson learnt. When your battery power is low, dont wait for it drain completely, rather power the pad down manually and let it charge when there is only about 2 to 4% battery life left.


Hope this guide helps people with the same problem as I had. Took me about 2 days of research and searching until I found a solution that worked. Hopefully this will assist anyone going through the same pain, and possibly not have to buy another one which seems to be the case when people take the pad to an istore with the same issue.


Cheers,

iPad 2, GUIDE TO FIX IPAD ON A LOOP

Posted on Apr 12, 2014 4:59 AM

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Posted on Mar 28, 2015 11:25 AM

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! 🙂🙂

48 replies

Jun 12, 2017 9:38 PM in response to WildChild7778

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!

Jun 25, 2017 1:10 PM in response to WildChild7778

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!!!

Jul 12, 2017 7:58 PM in response to WildChild7778

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.

Sep 17, 2017 12:56 AM in response to _Simon

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

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

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