Recently when upgrading my jailbroken iPhone 3GS from 4.2.1 to 4.3.2 it got grayed out WiFi and Bluetooth switches, with empty mac addresses in the Settings panel. It also triggers watchdog that reboots the device frequently (couple of minutes).

Searching the internet and this forum leads to the conclusion it was either a hardware failure or nvram corruption. I believe it was the second as it worked fine for various months without issues, just having the problem after the software upgrade.

However it seems most tools to recover this problem were for old iPhone (2G?) and iOS versions. Any idea on how to recover it from 4.x (4.3.2 is my current version).

For the record, I tried different approaches already, from downgrade to official Apple firmware to PwnageTool to Redsn0w with iPad firmare (6.15) but they all fail while updating the baseband (redsn0w, itunes stops at the 99% after a long wait).

Publish your restore log please.

Doubtful this can be fixed though.

Thank you for your promptly answer, I was out so my delay. Logs:

2011-04-19 18:32:44.000 iTunes[540:40b]: restore library built Feb 3 2011 at 02 - Pastebin.com

Seems the important bits are:

radio-error = 256
radio-error-string = 'Corrupted stack'
...
Ping failed, trying again
...
- Sending +xdrv=10,2 failed
- Sending +cpwroff failed

Let's hope you can help me. Thanks! :-)

I'm sorry to say - I don't know any (software) way to repair your phone.

What would be a non-software way to repair it? Maybe I can try... worse than now (a brick) it can't be :-)

Originally Posted by k-s

What would be a non-software way to repair it? Maybe I can try... worse than now (a brick) it can't be :-)

Well, if the problem is corrupted NVRAM, rather than corrupted baseband. Then it might be possible to acecss this from a patched iBoot or openiBoot - this is beyond my abilities.
There are two copies of NVRAM stored, so maybe one is still intact.

You could also carefully desolder the NOR chip and use dedicated hardware to reprogram the NVRAM section of the chip.

Thank you! Will see what I can do here.

Originally Posted by k-s

Thank you! Will see what I can do here.

Just to note- as far as I know openiBoot (or any alternate low level bootloader) isn't publicly available for the 3GS yet. I'd ask around in the iPhoneLinux forums if someone wants to have a try at fixing the corrupted NVRAM for you.

Otherwise, you need to look at the physical (desoldering) option. Again I'd ask the assistance of an expert (someone who can hardware unlock a 3GS - there are some very skilled hardware types who can do this)

Hello.
Sorry for my english.

I 've got the same trouble with my 3GS. I have done an upgrading in 4.3.2 and
the phone as lost is IP addresses and now it is restarting every 3 mn.

I have the box with the EIMI and the Phone's serial number

I spend hours on the net, downloading tools, installing programs.
A far as i go, i acheived to install via usb, cydia and some background tools.
I am trying to stop the communication center (in order to stop wifi, bluetooth and 3G because the nvram as no addreses for them).


One thing i can't understand is: if the Nvram get erased by an upgrade, why can't we do the reverse thing ?

Can someone help me to fix this ?
or almost stop the 3 mn restarting, in this case i can give it to my childs.

Regards

Originally Posted by Sined

One thing i can't understand is: if the Nvram get erased by an upgrade, why can't we do the reverse thing ?

Well, the update process can only change some parts of Nvram - not the entire thing.
Apple has checks in iBoot that restrict the ability to make these type of changes, these checks need to be patched out or iBoot replaced with an open source alternative.

the three minute reboot is likely a watchdog process. That might be possible to be patched out (would prevent the reboot, but not fix the underlying problem)