Bricked No Home Button

[Ekaterinburg07]

The other day cydia froze on me and my phone stopped working (iPhone 2g, 3.1.2). I decided to try and fix it... however I don't have a functioning home button. Eventually I used RecBoot to get it into recovery mode and used a pre-jailbroken custom ISPW to fix it. Everything went fine except that cydia kept crashing. I tried everything to make it work and decided that perhaps a good thing to do would be to 'erase all data and settings'... well that was a bad thing to do. Now my iphone is bricked. It will charge, sit on the apple logo (SiNful) but the computer will not recognize it, neither will iphonebroswer, recboot, DFUmode... I would slap it into DFU mode if I could, but the lack of a home button is preventing me from doing so. I think its seen the last days of its functioning life.
But I am a problem solver and like a good challenge. Perhaps there is some way to fix it. If anyone has any ideas, I mean any, let me know and I'll give it a whirl.
Thanks a lot!

Seriously? 103 people looked and haven't a clue as to what to do? Come on folks there must be a way...

[Ekaterinburg07]

I think the only way to fix is to get the home button repaired. Then I can put it in DFU and restore it.

[i.Annie]

Without your home button you can't jailbreak with any tool besides custom firmwares. I think you just had a bad custom firmware so make a new one and try it again.

[Ekaterinburg07]

Uhh... obviously you didn't read the problem. But thanks for posting something.... albeit useless.

[i.Annie]

Right and if I mistakenly misread, you don't have to react that way when I am trying to lend a hand. Let me re-read and try to solve your problem.

Ok, I see my mistake. And I'm terribly sorry my first response was useless to you.

Here's a more accurate response. You can't restore to a custom firmware without putting it in pwned dfu mode which you can't like you said without a home button. I want to say if youve been jailbroken before though that the pwned dfu might not be required. So i said before to redo the restore to custom firmware. If thats not helpful to you, you can set into recovery mode like you said you could before and restore to a stock firmware. You can then only use jailbreaks if you planned to jailbreak again with tools that don't use dfu mode, which on 3.1.3 or 3.1.2 you could do so with spirit, jailbreakme, but they do require official SIM to activate.

So, you'd want to put into recovery and restore to stock 3.1.3 or 3.1.2 and use either jailbreakme or spirit to jailbreak if you're not getting good results trying the custom firmware method.

I hope this is more helpful to you, if not then I apologize again and will no longer bother you.

Oh I forgot, go and get your home button fixed if this is all too problematic for you. That will surely make your iPhone easier to use, but I'm sure you already knew that. I would just like to agree with you that getting the home button fixed is a good idea if possible.

[Ekaterinburg07]

I would be able to do all that ifmy computer could detect the iphone... but if you re-read for the third time, my computer is not recognizing the phone. You seem to have over looked that little, yet important fact.
So please make yourself useful some place else.

[Simon]

Broken home button is the worst button to lose. With a broken power button you still have options but without the home button you cannot even manually kick it into recovery from your current state.

So basically you have 2 options:
1: Fix the home button
2: Get a new phone

[i.Annie]

Recovery mode if successful usually allows the computer to detect the device. If it doesn't detect it even in recovery mode, then try another computer.

Or get your home button fixed.

Or buy a new phone.

If my advice isn't what you want to hear, I apologize for that. But to be perfectly honest, I don't think you're going to hear anything different from anyone else.

[Simon]

No way for him to get into recovery from boot loop without a home button though. That erase all media and settings things is what did him in.

[i.Annie]

Then of course the only options left is to buy a new phone or replace the home button.

[Ekaterinburg07]

Thank you! Someone who could actually understand the question! Now I know what to do. I appreciate it.

Funny how answers bring up more questions... When I erased all data, what happened? Why couldn't I use some fancy program to get it to 'wake up' or kick it out of this loop, like SHSH or something?

[Stray]

I would be able to do all that ifmy computer could detect the iphone... but if you re-read for the third time, my computer is not recognizing the phone. You seem to have over looked that little, yet important fact.
So please make yourself useful some place else.

Oh she understood your problem but you are acting in a rude fashion. Like Annie and x98car either fix it (which isn't hard) or buy a new phone(which is tough if you need money)

[i.Annie]

It's ok Stay, thanks but it's fine

To answer your last question, on any jailbroken device hitting the erase settings will set you into a boot loop. This tidbit I overlooked and was too caught up with the fact that you were able to put into recovery mode before.

I can't get technical as to exactly why it sets jailbroken devices into a boot loop, but that's just what it does. It essentially renders you unable to get into recovery mode or dfu mode without a home button. It requires a manual set with hard buttons. Because it is in a boot loop, it never boots correctly therefor your computer can't recognize the device. That's why no software programs can set it into recovery or DFU because the device can't be recognized as it isn't booting up at all. It starts to boot, then stops and loops to reboot again.

I want to say it does this because hitting that erase settings button clears the phone and possibly either creates a conflict with the jailbreak injection and the device's OS, or it also erases part of the jailbreak which causes the phone to malfunction.

[Trypt4mine]

Ya there is absolutely no reason to be a **** to a mod that is offering to help you. You posted in this thread and were waiting on answers and got them. So quit you ******** man.

[i.Annie]

Thanks for your support, it's ok though, really. I appreciate your input lol, just chill out on the language ok? Thank you again though.

[mmaboi21]

Home button is very easy to replace, although 2nd gens can be a bit tricky. You love a challenge though right???

[Ekaterinburg07]

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

Well thanks! That was actually informative. I learned something.

[area51crypto]

Trash the phone and buy one off Craigslist for $100.

A 2g iphone is very complexed to disassemble.

[Stray]

It's ok Stay, thanks but it's fine .

No problem annie btw you accidentslly said stay not stray lol

[i.Annie]

Lol iPhone typing, it's flawed