HELP iPhone 4 Stuck in Recovery/DFU Loop!

[Ratman2050]

Hi, I have a very difficult problem to fix, I have a lot of experience with unlock/jailbreaking but this problem is the first time I had to deal with it and it stumped me, and I need to fix this by tmmrw.

I had an iPhone 4 on 4.0.2 with baseband 1.59.00 (but for some reason I have 4.2.1 SHSH saved in TinyUmbrella only?). I successfully jailbroke it on limera1n and installed Cydia to make sure. Then I needed to remove all my contacts and songs so instead of doing a restore I just went to General->Settings->Reset->Erase iPhone. When I did this it took a very long time (10hrs+) and was showing the apple logo with a circle ring, so I left it overnight and then it drained the battery.

At this point it wouldn't turn on without being stuck in that same apple logo and circle ring screen loop, so I decided to restore the 4.0.2 firmware. I went to try to restore with TinyUmbrellas TSS server on in iTunes using multiple different methods and got different errors. Everytime I would result in the recovery/DFU mode loop.

I decided to upgrade to 4.1 still preserving my baseband as I need to jailbreak and unlock the phone. I got stock 4.1 ipsw and custom activated 4.1 ipsw and the custom activated ipsw would restore successfully (by first putting in pwnd DFU mode using iReb) but when it did iTunes would say, "Your iPhone has been restored to factory settings, it should show up in iTunes and this message will close" but when it showed up in iTunes it always showed up in recovery mode....I decided to jailbreak anyways using GreenPoison as Limera1n kept being stuck on "DFU mode...waiting" and GreenPoision would end in a white screen on the iPhone. It showed up in TinyUmbrella however, but when I kicked it out of recovery it would never startup and would still be stuck in loop. BUT it would show that in TinyUmbrella it had firmware 4.0.2 and baseband 1.59.00. Which means the 4.1 restore even though iTunes said it worked, the firmware on the iPhone is still at 4.0.2. SO I was very confused, idk what to do now but I really need this iPhone to turn on with a jailbreakable/unlockable firmware/baseband.

I know I don't have any SHSH but 4.2.1 saved for some reason on 4.0.2 but I am not sure if the upgrade/restore would work or not on 4.0.2/4.1 as iTunes said it worked and sometimes gave 1004 errors which means I just need to kick out of recovery.

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

P.S. I also misplaced/lost 2 iPhone 3g's this same day so I am having a very bad day

[iYeow]

Tiny umbrella will not restore your firmware, it is only used to save shsh and to verify your blob when restoring to firmware thru itunes.
You said you only have 4.2.1 blob, then you are going to restore to 4.2.1 and lose your unlock. There is no way you can preserve your baseband for iphone 4 at 4.2.1

[Ratman2050]

Tiny umbrella will not restore your firmware, it is only used to save shsh and to verify your blob when restoring to firmware thru itunes.
You said you only have 4.2.1 blob, then you are going to restore to 4.2.1 and lose your unlock. There is no way you can preserve your baseband for iphone 4 at 4.2.1

Right, I understand that, but why does iTunes say it works? And howcome TinyUmbrella says it is still on 4.0.2 with 1.59.00 bb?

I would upgrade to 4.2.1 preserving the baseband however someone already bought this phone from me and needs it ASAP so I can't wait for the untethered jailbreak to be released for 4.2.1.

thanks for the reply.

[Simon]

Tiny umbrella shows the last firmware the phone was on when it was booted up normally. That is why you are seeing 4.0.2. The reason you kept ending up in dfu when restoring to 4.1 is because you dont have SHSH for 4.1. So even though you were able to bypass the itunes SHSH check by entering pwned dfu you cannot bypass the SHSH check that the phone does on boot up, which is why you were left in dfu after the restore.

To preserve your baseband you need to google for a unofficial pwnage tool bundle that is capable of making a 4.2.1 custom firmware that has no baseband update. That is your only shot for preserving baseband now.

Try this: HOW TO: Jailbreak An iPhone 4 Running On iOS 4.2.1 Using An Unofficial PwngeTool Bundle | FSMdotCOM

Or you can wait for the untethered jailbreak to come out and wait for pwnage tool to be officially updated.

[Ratman2050]

Thanks for the information x98! That makes sense.

I guess that is my only choice, not sure why the 4.0.2 SHSH is not saved, I guess I lucked out on this one.

[ihappy]

You can try performing this:
How-to Upgrade iOS 4.2.1 Preserving Baseband | Iphone 4 Jailbreak.org

Although I don't know how much it will help you seeing as you are already stuck in dfu mode

[bondkt]

Just to add on. You should never ever never EVER use the setting>reset UNLESS you are jailbroken by pwnagetool\sn0wbreeze. As you can see, this is the result, the endless loop (i also learned this the hard way).

we shall be in touch.

[Ratman2050]

Yeah I was surprised when I learned that after the fact. I feel like people should make this more prevalent as its a simple thing that can do a lot of damage.

[Simon]

Well, to non jailbreakers that setting can be perfectly fine, so Apple isnt going to warn you about it. The warning is in at least one sticky I know of.

[Ratman2050]

Well just to let everyone know, I successfully updated to 4.2.1 using custom ipsw and preserved the baseband 1.59.00. Thanks for everyone's help.

[Simon]

Glad it worked out for you

[Ratman2050]

There is one problem however, safari and cydia will not open, I know why cydia will not open because it is tethered, but what about safari?

Also I read there were some wifi issues I tried it out and I could connect to gps and find my current location, but it wouldn't load the weather or youtube...any help?

[Simon]

safari wont work without booting tethered either.