IPad 2 Crashing after IOS 9.0.2 Update, Useless

If you are having issues with Safari, there is a, recently, discovered bug in iOS 9.2.1

In the Settings app, under the Safari settings panel tap the panel, in the right window, turn off/disable Safari Suggestions.

As far as my procedures are concerned, they are very well documented and detailed and are still working well for me and as of this past weekend, my detailed procedures and modified backup/restore procedure has work well, so far, for over two dozen users who have posted here with issues specific to their iPad 2.

And some time earlier, in order for users like you, who claim that what I am posting for possible solutions and fixes is pure bunk and doesn't work AT ALL, I have since added a disclaimer to all of my own possible fixes/solutions/procedures for helping users with older iPad performance issues, every time I post these, now.

This is to keep users, like yourself, from, basically, calling me liar.

It reads like this and is visible in BOLD lettering in these particular response postings:

"I make no guarantees, expressed or implied, that any of my own procedures will return EVERY older iPad to a usable, running condition."

I Have tried responding to this message 5 times and it freezes. Let's hope this time works! I too have recently updated and have big problems. The lady in the Apple Store told me it would help make my IPad 2 faster. Not even close. I updated via wifi. I have lots of space left. I googled after I updated and followed some steps to help make the iPad faster. I even restored the iPad and deleted apps. It's slow, takes for ever to load. Sometimes the typing goes funny. The wifi cuts in and out and has never done that before and it does it numerous places. I don't always alerts and now I have to re boot each day for it to work a little better. I am very disappointed in what's happening and at a loss to what I can do. I paid a $1000 for this one and I would

iinked to have had this a little longer. I haven't fixed any grammar mistakes here because when I do it the screen freezes and I can't type and have to restart each time.

I have stripped my iPad 2 down to the bare bones, shut off everything that is supposed to cause problems, reinstalled the OS multiple times from iTunes, gotten rid of supposed bad apps and still I can't browse a simple web page any longer, or click on anything off of facebook without a crash. Just opening mail crashes from time to time and the lagginess of everything now makes this ipad2 unusable to the point I may never buy another Apple device. If this is a marketing plan to get users to upgrade to the next version of an Apple product, it's having the opposite effect. I have owned every Apple device dating back to the 80's but this crippling of a device that used to work flawlessly might be the last straw.

Apple doesn't release iOS upgrades/updates that cripple their own devices.

Clearly, you have an issue with your iPad 2.

All of my older iPad models are running very well on iOS 9.2.1.

Have you tried any of my suggested fixes, solutions and my own modified backup/restore procedures that have been listed multiple times in this posting?

Once, AGAIN, Here is my modified backup/ restore procedures complete with a disclaimer.

Follow this procedure verbatim and to the letter.

THIS PROCEDURE DOES NOT RETURN YOUR iPAD TO ITS PREVIOUS iOS VERSION.

Also, as a disclaimer.

I make no guarantees, expressed or implied, that any of my own procedures will return EVERY older iPad to a usable, running condition.

First, connect your iPad to USB and sync and backup your iPad to iTunes (make sure,FIRST, your iTunes is up to the most latest version).

Then disconnect/eject your iPad from the computer.

From just the iPad, in the Settings App under the General setting, look in the right column for Reset option, then erase and reset your iPad to completely erase your iPad and then, again, from the iPad, set it up as a new iPad setup to factory "out of the box" operation.

Then reconnect your iPad to the computer and make sure to cancel the syncing, by tapping the small X to the left in the top center iTunes display box.

iTunes should detect your iPad. If iTunes begins to try and sync, again, cancel the sync.

Select Restore from Backup instead and pick your last backup to restore back to your iPad.

Once the restore is complete, finish setting up the iPad and let it sync back to iTunes you can either cancel the sync, again or let it backup, again.

Then disconnect the iPad.

Do one hard reset of your iPad by holding down both the Home and sleep/wake buttons simultaneously until your iPad goes to black and restarts with Apple logo, then release the buttons.

Once your iPad is back to the Home screen,

In the Settings App under the General tab, to the right under Spotlight sesrch, try disabling the search under apps that really do not need a search, like some games, remotes, apps that really do not need to be searched, etc., to reduce the list for Spotlight to search.

In Settings app, under the Safari settings panel, tap the panel and in the right hand window, turn off/disable Safari Suggestions.

Try turning on Reduced Motion.

This is found in the Settings App in the General tab the left panel.

In the right panel look under Accessibility, the look for Reduce Motion and turn this feature "On".

You should see an appreciable performance increase on all iPad 2, 3 and 4 models.

If you have the iOS Mail app set to automatically fetch mail at one of the default fetch time intervals, in the Settings App, under the Mail, Contacts, Calendar settings panel, tap this panel, in the righthand window, turn off/disable Push Mail and set fetching mail for either every hour or set for manual fetch only for all of your mail accounts.

In the Settings App under the General Tab, in the right column, look for Background App Refresh and turn this setting to "off".

If you purchased any music from iTunes, you will need to redownload that content back to your iPad for playing directly from your iPad and not from Apple Music servers.

Also, if your iPad contained a lot of images in the Photos app, these will take time to regenerate the original AND thumbnail images themselves inside of the Photos app when you first launch it.

Good Luck!

I appreciate your persistence in trying to help people with this issue. I will try all of your steps tomorrow and see if it helps. I just find it frustrating that Apple doesn't address these problems with a patch instead of making users seek advice from discussion boards and spend months trouble shooting a problem that didn't exist when the product was initially sold to the consumer. The feeling that it was purposely crippled, comes from comments made by support staff at Apple stores. Maybe they were not told to say things about the lack of power that older models have, but they do say it and its perceived as a sales tool for upgrading.

If you are getting comnemts like that from Apple Store employess, you should be reporting the store and relavent employess to Apple as this info is not true across the entire, worldwide older iPad user base.

I have upgraded/updated about a half dozen older iPads without issue/s.

The employees are telling customers false info and should be duly reported.

If I were you, I would contact Apple directly at 1-800-MYAPLE and ask calmly ask where you can post a formal complaint and give them your Apple Store location and if you remember the employee/s name/s, give them this info. also.

That store location is disseminating false, erroneous and/or inaccurate information.

I wasn't expecting this to happen. I have some time on my hands and wasn't envisioning needing the iPad 2 much today, so I decided to go ahead and try the latest version of iOS 9 since I have seen that others who have erased and set it up have had success. That and I am having a lot of problems with Safari reloading pages - sometimes to the point where I have to give up on reading something because it constantly refreshes.

I erased a bunch of the apps that don't have stored data (like kids story books) and all the video to speed up the restore from backup feature. I then went and erased my iPad to set it up as 'factory'. Well, when it turned back on, it came up running iOS 8.4.1 (the last version I installed). To me this was pleasant surprise and I think I'll give it a few days to see just clearing out the crud on the iPad that had accumulated over the last almost a year will improve stability of Safari.

So it looks like if you have an older version of iOS, you can still clean off your iPad and not lose that older version of iOS.

I did run into 3 hiccups:

1. It wouldn't fully restore from backup in the first option page you get in iTunes. After trying and failing twice to get non Apple Apps to show up, I seletected 'Restore as New'. This launched the iPad display panel in iTunes and it began restoring.

2. I noticed it was trying to restore from Oct 2015. I killed that operation and manually selected 'Restore from Backup' on the Summary page and saw my Feb 29 2016 backup was an option and manually selected that.

3. Apparently iOS or iTunes cannot handle leap day and it appears that I am stuck restoring back to Oct 2015. I think that most of the games I play on the iPad are linked online somehow, so I don't know that I really lost anything. If I did, it's a game that I probably haven't really played much this year as a few of them just hit the tedious point as all the main missions were finished, so no great loss. The downside is that the 50 or more apps I cleared off are now all back, so it's taking forever to restore the iPad. Then I'll have to update apps again, which I also did before backing up. On the upside, it seems I did not have any video loaded when that backup was made, so that will cut down on the restore time.

I'll update after a couple of days if iOS 8.4.1 Safari is behaving better or not. If it still seems prone to reloading (with all the bells and whistles turned off)

I Had the same and despite all suggested fixes always the same.

I did get a clue with a Chrome crash which listed the error and mentioned memory.

I then remembered that with Mac OS9 the ram memory protection was pretty dire causing these sort of crashes.

The iPad 2 has only 500mb of memory.

i Have since bought an Air2 and with the much increased ram no crashes at all. If Apple would only explain or fix their memory protection that would be good as not everyone is able to pay into the Apple coffers.

NO, there are not tens of millions of iPad 2s working with iOS 9 perfectly. We actually have no idea how many, and anyone claiming otherwise is just being a fanboy. Lets face it- most people are barely aware of what's on the greater Internet outside Facebook and links people send them. How many even know these forums exist, and would bother posting a problem if they did?

Have you noticed the slow down in iPad sales? I attribute much of it to these software issues. Regular folks get an iPad, happily upgrade when their device tells them to, performance goes in the toilet, and as far as they know it's just busted or worn out so they're too disappointed to buy a new one.

Amongst family, friends and coworkers I know of 15 iPad 2s- ALL have been completely nerfed by iOS 9. Anecdotal? Yes, but I'm going with my 15 for 15 known sample (and endless hundreds of cases I've personally seen online) over fantasy speculation.

I've poked and prodded as much as I can, and all I can figure at this point is that code incompatible with A5 processor in the iPad 2 is getting incorrectly installed, or there simply is no install version of things specifically for the A5. The Javasvript engine is home to a lot of the problems- turn off JS and Safari is still awful, but it hardly crashes anymore. Of course half the web no longer works because web designers now need eight pages of Javascript to do a link or show an image because the A and IMG tags are so passé. Yeah, not a fan of web designers.

If anyone truly has an iPad 2 that works fine with iOS 9, there must be some sort of processor revision difference or maybe a firmware change during the iPad 2 lifecycle, because these issues are real and persistent. And yes, Apple is at fault for claiming iOS 9 suppoted the iPad 2, because clearly it does not.

THis is from someone who has been an Apple fan since the first Apple II computers. Their hardware is still great, but there is something completely off the rails in their software development. Many well known Apple advocates in the industry are expressing the same concerns. This is not some small core of complainers with faulty devices.

My iPad 2 has been upgraded/updated all along and mine has been peforming flawlessly.

I am using mine right now to type this post.

My Wife's iPad 3 is runnng great on the latest iOS 9.3.1 update.

I can tell you similar success stories of 6-7 family and friends whose iOS 9 upgrades/updates on their older iPad models went fine.

The reason I know this is because I was the one who upgraded/updated their devices for them.

Also, being involved in these forums for a long time, users having issues with their older iPad models, even iPad 2 models, seem to have more issues and problems because they chose the much less reliable, over the air, WiFi mehod of upgrading/updating their iDevices instead of using iTunes on a computer to upgrade/update their devices.

The most reliable and best method of upgrading/updating iDevices is to do it by connecting up iDevices to iTunes on a computer and backing up and completing the iOS upgrade/update through iTunes.

This method ensures the chance of a successful, glitch free upgrade/update as iTunes will download the complete iOS upgrade/updatevpackage and not simply download a smaller version over WiFi based upon the model of iDevice.

The iTunes method ensure your iDevice gets every piece of the iOS upgrade/update.

Also, some iPad users try and upgrade/update their iDevices/iPads when there is very little free storage space left (less than 3 GBs of free data storage space)!

Bad idea!

iDevices are computers and like all computes, they need suffcient free data storage space to operate properly.

I always recommend that iPad users leave, at least, 4 GBs or more of free data storage space to ensure proper iOS operation and functionality.

As yoy can see, everyone uses and treats their iDevices differently and there can be a lot of different variables that can affect various iPad models and affect various operations and functionality.

There was a major debacle/serious issues and bugs with the latest iOS 9.3 update that I decided to have those I know avoid updating until I was sufficiently convinced that the latest iOS 9.3.1 would finally solve most of the bugs and glaring issues.

I do not "jump" to immediately installng any OS upgrades/updates.

There are professional people/users who get paid to test new OS upgrades/updates before the masses jump and upgrade/update.

Those that do this are the ones who end up getting their devices foisted upon if there are problems with an OS.

I would rather wait awhile to update/upgrade in case of major issues such as iOS 9.3 had.

Neither of our situations is valid, either.

Not every user of older iDevices/ iPads experience issues with iOS upgrades/updates.

It is, usually, a very small pecentage of users who experience issues with a new iOS.

Those that aren't experiencing issues with their older iPad models, do not post in community user technical support forums

Say 5 pecent or less of the entire older iPad using user base report issues with their devices after an iOS upgrade/update.

While the actual number of users affected maybe, relatively, large, it is still a, relatively, small minority of affected users.

When iOS 9.3 was initially released, there may have been upwards of a few thousand users, maybe a little more, that posted into these forums with the initial issues iOS 9.3 had.

I Have some new information on this.

I Recently bought an Air 2 and immediately noticed no crashes and of course very fast etc etc, a nice machine.

My wife took over the ipad2 and uses every day without one crash. No changes were made to the apps or configuration.

THe conclusion is that whether you get crashes on an ipad2 or not is very much down to use. I always use multiple tabs and in and out of apps, my wife does not.

RAM seems to be major difference, apart from processors, which would make a difference and I guess this reminds me of OS9 which had similar probs due to memory management.

512k on the iPad 2 and 2 G on the Air 2.

Then we are either living in different universes or, like I said, there are two different versions of the iPad 2 and/or A5 processor.

Or perhaps we have very different definitions of "working flawlessly."

i have an iPad Mini 2 I won at work that also works fine. That's not the issue here, nor the iPad 3 you mention, or any other older devices you know about that are not iPad 2. The issues appear to be specific to devices with the A5 processor.

People keep posting try this or try that, and we've done all that. Multiple times. It doesn't work.

Well,

Here"s a video clearly showing how well an iPad 2 runs with the last iOS 9 update, iOS 9.2.1.

They are comparing it to an iPad 3 running the same iOS version.

My own iPad 2 runs a little snappier than the one in this video, but the one is this video appears to runs iOS 9 pretty well, IMHO.

I found this link and kept it for all of the naysayers that claim Apple is trying to "obsolete'" my iPad 2,

Nothing is further from the truth.

http://youtu.be/J5LwMePMCIQ

http://youtu.be/bF3ORjPYCxE

I never said Apple is trying to obsolete anything. I even said the issue might be subtle hardware differences/revisions within the iPad 2 version.

I design satcom hardware, and I see that all the time. Some logic analyzer from Tektronix comes back from calibration and no longer works with our test software. Turns out the cal folks flashed a firmware update, and a register definition changed.

Nice video. I'm very happy for them. Mine's still broken. And neither video covers the usage areas where the most problems arise.

Some older iPad users have had more success taking their older, malfunctioning iPads into an Apple Store and having the Genius Technicians try and figure out the issue/s and try to solve it.

If you have an Apple Store that is within a reasonable distance to travel, why don't you take it there for them to look at.

AND, if they give you the spiel about your iPad 2 being too old, ask for the next level of management at the store.

The iPad 2 IS STILL SUPPORTED for the latest iOS, it is up to Apple and its employees to try and actually fix issues with their own, still supported, products!

If still no joy ask for top manager, get actual names of the managers and of all the employees that were involved with NOT solving your issues, the location and number of the store and call Apple direct at 1-800-MYAPPLE and explain to them how you were treated at that Apple Store Location, IF that store gives you the runaround and nothing but excuses and tells you you need to purchase a new iPad.

That is not good customer service and NOT how you treat an Apple customer who has major issues with a still supported mobile device.

Good Luck!