I recently got an old, dysfunctional iPhone 2G from a friend and was curious about if I could fix it. In the end I could, but it took me a couple of days of frustration. Had i known exactly what to do and in what order, it would have been a quick, painless job. I guess there are others out there with the exact same troubles and symptoms, and I would be happy if I could save you some time by pointing you in the right directions. I took fairly detailed notes along the way, and this is an attempt to summarize it all in a more comprehensive way than in the original thread. I encourage you to read that one too though, since it is more detailed, even if there are a lot of dead ends.

A word of caution: I am still very much a newbie when it comes to the iPhone world. I don’t know anything about programming or unix commands. What I did here is by no means a foolproof solution that will work on any phone and the post most likely contains quite a few unnecessary steps and things you could do quicker/better/smoother. This is what worked for me and my particular iPhone, and if you’re not having the exact same problems as I did, I probably can’t give you any good answers on how to solve yours. I learned a lot from the experience by searching, reading and experimenting, and although that’s pretty cool in itself, in the end I wish there would have been some guidance like this for me when I started.

Big thanks to everybody who helped me along the way, especially volkspost and sekone, but also to the whole Hackint0sh forum and all programmers who made the tools. This is truly a great community!


But to the point. This was the initial status:
- iPhone 2G, manufactured week 42 2007
- Stuck in recovery mode (USB plug + iTunes logo)
- Possible to go into DFU mode or turn off, nothing else
- Restore (to any .ipsw, unmodified or custom) in recovery mode gave error 23 and in DFU mode error 1600 (OS X 10.6.1, iTunes 9.0.1) or 23/1601 (Vista SP1, iTunes 8.2.1). Occasionally a whitescreen together with 1600.
- I never had any 10xx errors (I believe this to be an important piece of info)
- The software/firmware history of the phone was a bit unclear and the only information I had was that the phone had been jailbroken and unlocked at some point, that it was rendered non-functional when upgraded to firmware 3.0.0 and that Ziphone had been used.


This is what worked for me:

I used iReb v3.1.2 (Vista SP1) to kick it out of recovery mode, using the "Fix Recovery Mode Loop" button. Then I installed libusb-win32-filter-bin-0.1.12.1 as per the given instructions. The phone woke up, showing a screen with "iPhone cannot make or receive calls. Restore from iTunes." I had the following info in Settings > General > About:

Bluetooth: 00:00:00:00:00:00
IMEI: blank
ICCID: blank
Modem Firmware: blank

Any attempt to DFU-restore a firmware still errored out in 1601 (Vista SP1, iTunes 8.2.1). I did a fresh install of Windows 7 and iTunes 7.5.0.20. Here I succeeded to downgrade the firmware to an unmodified 1.1.4 in DFU mode with no iTunes errors.

I ended up with the activation screen and when I clicked the little “i” it showed me the same IMEI number as etched on the back of the phone. Then I ran Kiphone, following this guide at iClarified. Then I DFU-restored to an unmodified 1.1.4 one more time, but I don’t know if that was necessary at all.

I installed iLiberty+ 1.3.0.113, following this hackint0sh guide and managed to jailbreak and activate the phone. Then I got stuck and couldn’t unlock it. At this point wifi and bluetooth worked and the baseband was version 04.04.05_G.

Instead I just DFU-restored to an unmodified 3.1.2 (OS X 10.6.1, iTunes 9.0.1). No errors and back to the activation screen. Then I made a custom 3.1.2 .ipsw firmware file with pwnage tool 3.1.4, restored in DFU (OS X 10.6.1, iTunes 9.0.1) and that was the end of it. Jailbroken, activated and unlocked. Happy ending.


Please don’t hesitate to improve this post by suggesting alternative and easier tools, routes or procedures. I hope I can save some time for those of you who are in the same situation.

Hey Pike, perfect tutorial, thanks!
Just one note: Once you are at 1.1.4 and got back IMEI, WiFi, BT, you dont need to unlock cause all is fixed by then. my tutorial you are referring to was made for users wanting to unlock and stay with 1.1.4.
You got it, congrats.
volkspost

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iPhone 3GS factory unlocked (3.1.2; Blackra1n, Cydia, OpenSSH, custom 3.0 ipcc file (no sig), tethering hack by Dev team, 32 GB)
iPhone 3G (3.0.1; Redsn0w 0.8, Cydia, OpenSSH) 16 GB

Great tutorial, Pike!!!

I have an iPhone 3GS with exactly your first initial status... I'm triying to fix it following your steps, but I see that iReb just works with 3G (not 3GS)... any suggestions??? At the iPhone iTunes screen, I see that IMEI and ICCID are in blank...

Thank you!!!