iPhone sparked when back cover removed

[autonomous]

Please help!!! I had my screen, digitizer and LCD replaced on my 2G(third-party). Since the digitizer was dead the "repair specialist" did not turn the phone off. When he removed the back cover from the board it sparked. The replacement was done, he plugged the phone to the wall and the apple logo and connect to iTunes were displayed. He said to restore from a backup on iTunes. So the phone is not detected by iTunes so I put the phone in DFU mode and comes up on iTunes in recovery mode. When I plug the phone into the computer the phone display is black. Nothing comes up-black screen. When I try to restore I get error 1601. I have tried to restore on a mac and windows xp. The phone only displays anything when plugged in directly to the wall.
So I decided to open the phone and test the battery, the reading is 3.92V. I also tried to downgrade to 2.2.1. I get the same error code. Please help!!! Any ideas are appreciated.

[Imahottguy]

Have you tried uninstalling iTunes completely and reinstalling? Per this Apple support doc

Honestly, the spark concerns me, I'm wondering if they fried something...

[autonomous]

I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling iTunes twice on my mac and windows machine, still the same error code-both machines.I looked at the phone battery and the ground cable didnt seem right, too loose. So I barely touched it and the cable was not attached to the the logic board. I am hoping that is the issue, so I can get this device up and running. Thanks for the input.