I am afraid life ***** for both of us. To update since I last posted, I redownloaded the 8.3 update and installed in recovery mode. No luck. I then ran Decipher Backup Repair against the backup I had the most hope for. It corrected a number of errors, and I no longer got an error message in trying to restore that backup file, but the iPad was right back into the restart loop. (I was impressed by that software nonetheless, and the nice people there refunded my money when the repair didn't result in a fix.) So I went back to factory mode again and restored the backup I pulled after starting to rebuild by hand -- creating folders, etc. Of course all my app data files, passwords, etc., etc., were blown away so it has become a tedious process to try to get back to normal.
I guess I jumped at the 8.3 install because I had seen both the wifi and Bluetooth issues and was hoping to have them go away. Impatience is dangerous.
Thoughts, in retrospect:
--Wait and read before installing an iOS upgrade.
--Before starting it, create a manual backup and then, if in Windows, go to the iOS backup directory (C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup) and move that new backup folder out of harm's way. Mind you, I still don't know if that would have saved me. It may be that 8.3 has some fundamental bug that only appeared in conjunction with the contents of my iPad.
--Be religious about using a good password manager. In my case, I use Password Safe / PWSafe on my PC and iPad, and keep the password database synced via Dropbox. My policy is to ALWAYS update it when I add an account or change a password, because it's so easy to get confused by differing password rules on different sites, etc. That made my recovery easier.
--Online file storage is your friend. I've recovered a number of data files -- PDFs and such -- that I've kept up on Dropbox.
--There is a place in **** for programmers who make it impossible to roll back an OS upgrade, even with the previous installer sitting on your machine.
--I might have been helped by a more-recent backup of my PC to my external drive. But with the new iPad I was so busy doing hundreds of updates and such, not to mention taxes, that housekeeping took a back seat.
--Apple's customer service people are hit and miss. Previous time I had to call I reached a woman who knew everything. This time the fellow was dense and obviously kept going away to look up and read from support bulletins. Yeah, I'd already done that online.
I really wish, for both our sakes, that I had better practical advice. Best of luck to you.
