Q: everything has gone wrong!

This is my first post and a problem that is both effecting my iPhone 4S and iTunes

So it started a few days ago, when all of a sudden, my iPhone wouldn't allow me to connect to any wifi. The slider in the settings and the button in the control centre had both been disabled. I hadn't had enough space on my phone to update the iOS and so thought that maybe this was the reason. So I installed iTunes 12.0.1 on my new laptop and connected my phone. Everything worked fine, synced up and backed up. I transferred all my pictures which was the large majority of data on my phone and began the update. I checked my phone though the update and then soon saw that the connect to iTunes display was up and on my laptop saw a box saying the the network timed out? so now, thanks to google, I think I discovered my phone was in recovery mode? was told to connect it to laptop, hold the home and lock button for ten, remove the lock button, I think its called DFU mode? well anyway phone didn't do anything, and iTunes decided it now wasn't going to recognise my phone. removed iTunes and reinstalled only to encounter the same problem. I'm a noob when it comes to this so pardon my potentially incorrect terminology, but so far ive checked the apple driver which is up to date, I tried deleting 2 of these three files that apple told me to, ssid or something? I have tried so many other things! but am getting lost in all this technology! :') please help!