My IPad2 is Requiring Activation

I have an IPad2 which is approximately 5 or 6 years old. It does not have any cellular service. I have not updated the software in a while. I used it the other day and then shut it off (I did not do a full power down, but just put it to sleep). I went back to it yesterday and punched in my code. It said that I had to activate my IPad. This made no sense to me because I had not done anything that would require an activation. But, since it was not letting me in, I figured I would try. It had a screen showing all of the wifi networks available. I clicked on one of mine and hit "next." It tried to activate and then gave me the message "Your iPad could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. Try connecting your iPad to iTunes to activate it, or try again in a couple of minutes. If this problem persists, contact Apple Support at apple.com/support."

I tried connecting my iPad to iTunes. When I went back to the wifi page, it had an option at the bottom to "Activate Using ITunes." However, it would not select that option, no matter how many times I tapped it, and it then disappeared. I pressed "next" and went back to that screen to see if it would reappear and it did not. I tried scrolling to the top or bottom of the page to reload the page and it did not show up. I restarted my computer and it showed up. Again, I tried to click on it, but it disappeared again without doing anything.

Being very determined, I turned on my computer, plugged my iPad into my computer and logged into iTunes. I searched throughout the page to see if there was a way I could remotely activate the iPad using iTunes through my computer, but there was not.

I went back to my iPad and restarted it, thinking that this might pop a screen up on my computer. No such luck. However, it popped up the "Activate Using ITunes" note again ... which promptly disappeared after I tried clicking on it.

Since the message gives the alternate solution of going to www.apple.com/support, I did that. Unfortunately, there are no solutions that page for this issue and the site did not actually allow me to contact Apple Support.

I came to this page and saw that there was another thread which talked about this exact problem. A LOT of people seem to be having this problem, though it seems to happening after an update, which I did not do. An Apple representative responded with directions on how to activate a new or used iPad, but did not actually address the question. The representative assumed that the readers were simply trying to find out how to activate their iPads. However, we KNOW how to do it - it's just not working. It seems that, since the representative responded, s/he did not provide any further advice after the writer advised that the solution was insufficient.

In further threads, one person reported that they took out an old SIM card they had put into the iPad and that allowed them to activate the device. Several other people said that worked for them too. Unfortunately, I never put a SIM card into my device and I wouldn't even know how to do that. As a result, that's clearly not the problem.

I would really like to find a solution to this issue. I am asking that an Apple representative please respond to this post to provide me with assistance as I am already losing faith in Apple over other issues.

Thank you.