Erasing iPhone content problems - no progress, just the turning circle

Nine_Lives

The wife has sold her iPhone 3GS so is wanting to erase all content & settings. It's a jailbroken 5.1.1. The buyer doesn't want it upgraded to iOS6.

Going through settings>general etc

Whenever i hit to erase all content, you just get the turning circle in the middle of the black screen - for ages, and ages, and ages. After an hour i turned the phone off & tried again, and again.

Why is it doing this? Is it because the phone is jailbroken?

Nine_Lives

I tried updating through iTunes - wont let me.

Tried doing restore & update through iTunes - wont let me. Error 3194. Very frustrating as i said i'd have it for the buyer tomorrow.

mije1983

Have you tried this?

http://osxdaily.com/2010/12/06/error-3194-fix-for-itunes/

Nine_Lives

mije1983 wrote: »

Have you tried this?

http://osxdaily.com/2010/12/06/error-3194-fix-for-itunes/

Yes. Unfrotunately it doesn't work.

It seems i can't erase the phone or update the phone with no reason as to why.

Is there some 3rd party software that'll let me erase the phone?

d123

As the phone was jailbroken you should never have used the erase feature on the phone (lots of warnings online about that).

You will probably have to DFU restore to reinstall the firmware.

A google should get you full instructions, try iclarified or Redmondpie.

Edit to add.

From memory, you now have no choice but to update, while its supposed to be possible to reload the old software using the Cydia server if the "blobs" are saved, I haven't ever seen it done successfully once the user has killed the restore facility by attempting to use the erase all content command on a jail broken phone.

Nine_Lives

Just to update - i got it sorted in the end. Started around 6:30pm, finished at 12:15am.

In the end, i couldn't erase, i couldn't update & i've no idea why.

What did finally work was restoring through redsn0w. The phone was running iOS5.0.1 so i restored it using the exact same iOS5.0.1 & this was the only way i could reset the phone.

Worked fine afterwards, so problem solved, eventually.

So i didn't have to update