Ios9 stuck on slide to upgrade

iPhone 5, useless after the update.

Problem is, you can't delete everything and start from scratch if you have "find my phone" enabled. This is because you have to disable it before you can restore from backup (or reset)

Reboot in recovery mode, it will allow you to restore your iphone. It didn't work anyway. Same thing.

For those of you who need their phone to just work, I have a temporary solution - provided that you made a back up prior to this (If you tried to update via iTunes then you probably would have and you can check by going to iTunes > Preferences > Devices and any back ups will be there.).

Boot the phone up in DFU mode (Detailed below if you don't know how to)

1. Connect your iPhone to your computer.
2. Turn iPhone off.
3. Hold power and home together for 10 seconds (exactly).
4. Release power but keep holding home until the computers beeps (observed on a PC) as a USB device is recognized.
5. A few seconds later iTunes should detect your iPhone.

And restore the iPhone. This WILL erase all data. Once complete, set it up as a new iPhone and voila! It will work.. you just won't have anything on it.

I restored my back up after doing that and it led me back to the slide to upgrade part - so if you just need to use your phone, the above can work as a temporary fix. Until Apple gets back to us with more information..

I shall try an iCloud backup restore and see what that results in..

This convoluted process worked for me (iPhone 6+):

- Did a hard reset *while iPhone plugged into iTunes.*

- iPhone asked for pass code which I entered.

- *Immediately* after the passcode was accepted on iPhone I pressed the "Restore iPhone.." button on iTunes. (iTunes had previously downloaded iOS 9 on a recovery attempt that failed earlier this evening).

- iTunes paused for a few seconds and then progress in extracting and verifying the restore was seen on iTunes as well as a long progress bar on the iPhone. It took a few minutes to restore the iPhone.

- iTunes gave this message: "Congratulations, your iPhone has been unlocked. To set up and sync this iPhone, click Continue." (Aside: I had requested an unlock from ATT a few weeks ago for travel and had unlocked the iPhone already).

- I hit Continue on iTunes and saw: "Welcome to your new iPhone screen."

- iTunes gave an option to restore from past backups, most recent being an August 3rd backup in iTunes but not last night's iCloud backup.

- Restored to Aug 3rd backup in iTunes on Mac.

- Saw typical restore message: (paraphrasing) "The settings have been restored, will appear in iTunes in a few seconds."

- Saw long status bar on iPhone, then Hello screen. iTunes stating iPhone has iOS 9.0 and was last backed up on 8/3.

- iPhone proceeds to Location services screen (disabled it just in case), Touch ID, iCloud, Diagnostic screens as normal when setting up iPhone initially.

- Once the setup screens were done, the General -> About settings confirmed iOS 9 but it was obvious from the changes on the phone.

- Turned off Find My iPhone in iCloud settings.

- Went to Settings -> General -> Reset and selected "Erase all content and settings"

- Long status bar appeared on iPhone screen (as is normal for this) and eventually the usual screens appeared to set up a new phone. The iPhone still had iOS9.

- Reached "Apps and Data" screen with 4 options: Restore from iCloud Backup, Restore from iTunes Backup, Set up as a New iPhone, Move Data from Android.

- Selected Restore from iCloud Backup. Signed into iCloud. Had to agree to a Terms and Conditions. It offered last night's iCloud backup which I selected.

- iPhone showed "Restore from iCloud."

- iPhone is now restoring from iCloud which, I understand, takes 1-4 hours per gigabyte backed up in iCloud.

Maybe this will help some of you.

EDIT: iCloud backup didn't work either. Just going to set it up as a new iPhone temporarily until there's a fix.

Just finished doing that - didn't work 😟

Phone is worthless!!!! Nothing works.

I am just another victim of this IOS 9 glitch after attempting to upgrade via wifi. After several attempts at troubleshooting the frozen phone, I got it to work. Here is what I did for my son's iPhone 5S. If your phone is stuck or frozen in any way while attempting to upgrade to IOS 9, try this:

1. Go to computer & open iTunes; do not connect phone yet, but be ready to connect

2. Update iTunes on your computer to 12.3 before proceeding; IOS 9 will NOT work with previous versions of iTunes so you must update before moving forward. If you cannot update, please follow these steps without doing so, and then choose to restore your phone from latest backup.

3. Hard reset your iPhone by pressing & holding the HOME & POWER buttons at the same time, and hold them down while the phone reboots

4. When the apple symbol reappears, immediately let go of the HOME & POWER buttons for a split second & press them both again simultaneously & hold them down

5. At this point, my phone entered the restore mode.

6. Plug your iPhone into your computer with iTunes already open (and updated to 12.3 if possible). iTunes immediately recognized the phone (which it had not while it was stuck in "slide to download" mode)

7. iTunes (via the computer) prompted me to either download IOS 9, or restore the phone using the latest backup. At this point you have 2 options.

A. If you want to abandon the upgrade, go ahead & restore your phone USING THE LATEST BACKUP from your computer. I did not do this, so hopefully it will work and you will be back in business with whatever IOS version you had before. Once complete, you should be finished here if this is what you choose. WARNING: If you do not use the latest backup to restore, you will be restored to factory settings & will lose all data & apps including photos, contacts, etc. Be careful not to choose the wrong restore options!!! If you are not sure, call Apple Support.

B. I chose to download IOS 9.

8. iTunes immediately began downloading IOS 9. The phone continued to have the restore symbol showing on its screen for several minutes, then it showed the Apple symbol with the download bar beneath it. iTunes showed the download activity simultaneously. Be patient, it may take a while, mine was about 15 minutes.

9. Once the phone & computer have upgraded to IOS 9, you should see the option on your phone again to slide...do so, unlock your phone if requested, and then the phone should go through a series of questions (mine was click continue, choose your wifi network from the list showing, continue again, and then finish). Your questions may be different depending on your phone & network settings.

10. Phone may then show Apple symbol again, and should work using IOS 9 now.

This worked for me. However, if the download brings you back to the frozen iPhone screen once again, you may want to choose option 7A above which is to go back through the steps and then restore your phone from its latest backup rather than continue with attempting to upgrade to IOS 9. Maybe best to wait until they get the bugs worked out! At least if you can get it to restore using latest backup,

Good luck everyone. Cheers!

I tried this, using the latest backup. It failed - iTunes told me I had to disable "Find my iPhone" in the phone itself first, which is impossible.

Guess I'm screwed.

You need to restore your device in recovery mode. With recovery mode you won't have to worry about responding to your phone before doing a restore.

My phone has been stuck like this for the past 5 hours. It's basically just a flashlight at this point. This is so unacceptable Apple, so completely unacceptable. I am beyond livid.

Worked perfectly. Will try updating again via iTunes.

This may be too late for me, but I think Strausscenter is on to something--I used his steps to at least get me to have iTunes allow me to restore back to an older update. Better thank brick. HOWEVER, I found this tip on the net in a search, and wonder if this may help others: http://ios9news.net/fix-ios-9-stuck-at-slide-to-update/

The following may be a hoax, but since I am in flight with an old iTunes restore, I can't test this out. Thoughts anyone on the workaround below? I hope this will help someone:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you are updating your iPhone / iPad to the new iOS 9, this is what happens:

You go to the Software Update page, then request to download and install the new iOS 9. Then you forget all about it.

Next thing you know, your iOS device’s screen is locked automatically.

Then, when you pickup the device to check, you see two things:

• Verifying Update
• Slide To Update

You can take your finger, like we did, to unlock the locked screen by swiping the “Slide To Update” button but nothing happens.

The iPhone / iPad is frozen.

And that is what happened with us last night – and several others have confirmed this issue!

You can’t unlock your iPhone’s screen and you can’t get rid of the verifying update pop-up too.

So what’s the solution?

We simply locked the phone by pressing the power button. Of course, it took us 5+ tries.

First, you have to constantly keep pressing the power button to lock the device.

Then you will get a blank loading screen, and the installation of your downloaded iOS 9 file will start immediately.

This was one of those tricks we have learned it the hard way. There must be other “fix” to this as well – and if you know any of them, feel free to share via the comment section below.

Strausscenter - Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU!!!! My experience was slightly different after step 7 (wasn't given a choice NOT to update to 9.0) but I was able to restore my phone from last night's backup using this method. After seven hours of dealing with this, I cannot tell you how relieved I am that this resolved the issue. PHEW!!!! I cannot possibly thank you enough!

🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂