iPad 2 iOS 9.3 can't activate

Italy , Swiss IT , iPad 2 iOS 9.3 , impossibile attivare iPad rivolgersi al supporto Apple sia tramite iTunes o over wi-fi 😠

iPad 2 iOS 9.3 can't activate after update, not over wifi, not via iTunes!

iTunes says contact Apple Support...

franchecco.93 :

Please look at the blog from igfrombris dated Mar 23, 2016 4:54 PM . It helped me following his instructions. The only difference: I needed to push the Home button AND the Sleep/Wake button.

Well, I figured out the problem. This is not a solution, mind you, but it does help to understand why the activation is not working.

I have my iPad setup to go through an intermediate server, so I can send traffic through my VPN, for testing purposes. So I ran wireshark on that machine, to see what it might be trying to do.

It's NOT trying to contact Apple's servers at all. Not a single packet. It was, however, very talkative with Facebook. So there we go. That's why activation doesn't work -- the device isn't even TRYING to contact Apple at all. Nice job, Apple, you managed to brick old devices, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Same here, needed to put the iPad into recovery mode and then reinstall the iPad 😮

1. Turn off the iPad
2. Hold power and home together for 10 seconds
3. When you something like this then connect to iTunes and restore to IOS 9.2
   

Hope it helps 🙂

All you who actually got to access the 9.3 upgrade were lucky (or perhaps not) My iPad 2 just tells me 9.2.1 is the latest update! My iPad 3 updated fine as did both iPhone 5s. I was wondering if iPad 2's were now dinosaurs and no longer supported?

Many thanks, it did cross my mind that the update may have been pulled (be nice if the announced that to put folks' minds at rest). I'll wait a bit I think..

I just got off the phone with AppleCare, they are aware of the issue and working on a fix as of March 24 3PM Eastern. No fix yet. Meanwhile, I am going to download 9.2 and reinstall from backup.

cant activated since thursday.. keep showing apple id cannot activated.. already done delete all device at icloud, update and restore via itunes even already tried downgrade to 9.2.1.. all did not working.. what should i do now ? really ***** ...

I had to put my iPad 2 in recovery mode and do a restore. When I did that it download and installed iOS 9.2.1. After that I could restore a backup and everything was working again. I wasn't offered to update to iOS 9.3. in iTunes, so I'm guessing Apple pulled the release for iPad 2 owners.

I won't be trying to update again until Apple releases a fixed update.

It has been 48 hours and my iPad 2 is still useless. It downloaded iOS 9.3 but won't activate. I get the same loop of problems every single time I try. I did backup my iPad before the update, but there isn't any way to get to the back up. This is SO frustrating!

I can not get this to come up.

I have it worse. It made my phone a brick so I can't call support. 😝