iPhone on Loop boot / Spinning wheel of death

**lordofdaflies** · 10-13-2011 01:50 AM

While trying to update my iPhone to iOS 5, I got a msg basically saying update failed. After which i disconnected my iPhone.

Now the phone starts to boot up shows the apple logo. After 15 sec it shows apple logo with restore bar thing below and then starts a spinning wheel of death.

Cannot connect to itunes in any way. Mac will not recognize the iPhone

iPhone 4
iOS 4.3.5 / 50
Factory unlocked and Non Jailbroken.

PLEASE HELP

**Danman03** · 10-13-2011 02:01 AM

Sounds like the phone got stuck. Have you tried manually putting it in DFU mode?

**lordofdaflies** · 10-13-2011 02:03 AM

Yeah done that. Does not work. I am trying DFU mode again. GOt it to recovery screen once and when i try to restore it says this iPhone is not Eligible or something stupid like that

EDIT
https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0

Hello Everybody,
I found the solution to all this:

MAC!
Click Finder.
At the top menu, click Go.
Select “Go To Folder” from the submenu.
Type “/private“.
Open the folder “etc” and locate the “hosts” file.
Copy it to your desktop > right click > show info > make sure you have the rights to read and edit it.
Open it in text editor.
Search “74.208.10.249 gs.apple.com” (somewhere at the bottom normally)
Add a “#” and a space before it and save the file.
Copy it back into the “etc” folder and replace the old “hosts” file.
Restart iTunes and it should be fixed!

**Danman03** · 10-13-2011 03:53 AM

Good deal. Looks like you figured it out. Great info for other people.

**n1ckn4m3** · 10-13-2011 04:28 PM

As an aside, this happened because at some point, either the OP or TinyUmbrella set his hosts file to point to saurik's SHSH caching server. If you're upgrading to a stock firmware, you should always ensure that this is commented out (as the OP noted, by putting a # in front of it). Just in case anyone was curious why it happened in the first place.

**pixelrogue** · 01-06-2013 11:13 PM

Similar problem: iOS 5.1.1 on a CDMA 4S. Crashed... now it will only provide an apple logo and spinning icon... rinse and repeat until battery is dead.

All - having a problem w/serious risk to the current setup. Hoping there are some experts here that can offer some recommendations outside of the usual suspects found around the web.

Environment: iPhone 4S (cdma), 5.1.1, Jailbroken, Gevey Ultra S Sim transposer.

Situation: Installed a 2-3 'innocent' tweaks from Cydia and can no longer access the device.
Risk: Full restore through iTunes (which is possible) will turn the 4S into iPod Touch - bumps up the iOS and BB locking the 4S from any known jailbreaks and Gevey will no longer work.

General Info:
• Can successfully put phone into DFU.
• iTunes, Redsn0w etc. will recognize the 4S when in DFU mode, but only in DFU.

• Can NOT bypass substrate booting with volume button pressed.
• Can NOT access device via iExplorer, iFunbox etc. to manually remove tweaks.
• Can NOT boot into iPhone. Only get white apple logo and/or spinning wheel.
• Can NOT modify much through latest Redsn0w (most items pop message 4S not yet supported.")
• Can NOT reflash, reinstall, re IPSW files even though original .ipsw and blobs are available.

Trying to find a way to manually remove what ever recent items were installed to get the device back - and am avoiding any full restore through iTunes. Maybe there is another way (ssh?) that will let me in to remove those files, though doubt if iExplorer etc. will not recognize the device.

Thank you in advance for any input.