i started out with an activated 2g iphone on 3.0 firmware. i wanted to jailbreak and unlock it for a trip to a foreign country i'm taking this friday. i was lost in a sea of options. maybe a flow chart would have been helpful. anyways, i decided to run the 3.0 version of PwnageTool. i checked "Enable baseband update", "Neuter bootloader", "Update bootloader", "Upgrade to 4.6", "Unlock baseband". i also accidentally left the "Activate the phone" option checked. i went into DFU mode, connected to itunes and after a while it hit:
The iPhone "iPhone" could not be restored. An unknown error occured (23)
i have osx 10.5.8 and itunes 9.0.2. i retried so many times with firmwares 2.0, 3.0, 3.1.2. with official IPSWs and with custom ones with various combination of options, with a different mac running osx 10.5.7 and itunes 8.2, made sure "~/Library/iTunes/Device Support" directory existed on each mac but i hit the same error 23 every time. now i have an deactivated iphone. does anybody know how i can recover?

Originally Posted by 1handclap

i started out with an activated 2g iphone on 3.0 firmware. i wanted to jailbreak and unlock it for a trip to a foreign country i'm taking this friday. i was lost in a sea of options. maybe a flow chart would have been helpful. anyways, i decided to run the 3.0 version of PwnageTool. i checked "Enable baseband update", "Neuter bootloader", "Update bootloader", "Upgrade to 4.6", "Unlock baseband". i also accidentally left the "Activate the phone" option checked. i went into DFU mode, connected to itunes and after a while it hit:
The iPhone "iPhone" could not be restored. An unknown error occured (23)
i have osx 10.5.8 and itunes 9.0.2. i retried so many times with firmwares 2.0, 3.0, 3.1.2. with official IPSWs and with custom ones with various combination of options, with a different mac running osx 10.5.7 and itunes 8.2, made sure "~/Library/iTunes/Device Support" directory existed on each mac but i hit the same error 23 every time. now i have an deactivated iphone. does anybody know how i can recover?

There was no need to use any of the bootneuter options. Your unlock was permanent. This is because you were at 3.0 unlocked already.
You need to get iRecovery going and see what state things are in

I think error 23 is a radio error, indicating it was not possible to access/initialise your baseband.

Your only choice is to downgrade back to OS 1.x and try to erase your baseband, if that happens you should be able to reload the baseband bootloader and then reload your baseband again.

There are threads related to this, look around.

olethros, thanks for getting back to me. i'm excited to imagine there's still hope. back in iphone 2.x days i jailbroke my phone but i never unlocked it. the phone has never been unlocked. when 3.x came out i upgraded to the official firmware through itunes (no hacks) because i read that, no matter what i would always be able to jailbreak because i had a 2g iphone. so that's the point my phone was at, official 3.0 when i tried pwnage tool 3.0 that got it in the state its in now where the screen has an image of a usb cable and an arrow pointing to itunes. i assume this is recovery mode. from what i gather irecovery gets you out of this mode. what mode does it put you in? normal, activated mode? would i be able to see the home screen and apps?

i tried several versions of irecovery that i found on the net. i even tried (unsuccessfully) to compile from source. but every binary i tried always errored out with No iPhone/iPod found. i tried on the other mac i mentioned in my initial post but it got the same error. its supposed to work when the screen has that connect to itunes image, right? i tried in the only other mode i can get my iphone in, dfu mode but still got the same message.

since i couldn't get irecovery working, i thought i'd try restoring to 1.x firmware like you suggest. i first tried an official 1.x ipsw but got error 1600. i tried creating a custom ipsw based from the 1.x firmware using the oldest pwnage tool i could get, 2.0.1 but it said, wrong firmware bundle selected. i tried other versions of pwnage tool, all resulting with the same error. is it possible to use pwnage tool with an older firmware? it seems that a particular version of pwnage tool only works with the corresponding version of firmware. how can i restore to 1.x?

Are you running an intel or ppc mac?

Originally Posted by Olethros

Are you running an intel or ppc mac?

i'm running intel

Originally Posted by 1handclap

i'm running intel

I had only one problem running iRecovery on intel/OS X 10.6.2. That was related to the need to move a shared library to a specific location before iRecovery would run sucessfully. This is a limitation of the way the links to the libraries are compiled into the app.

Originally Posted by Olethros

I had only one problem running iRecovery on intel/OS X 10.6.2. That was related to the need to move a shared library to a specific location before iRecovery would run sucessfully. This is a limitation of the way the links to the libraries are compiled into the app.

i hit that problem with one of the version of irecovery too. i compiled and installed libusb but that particular version of irecovery depended on a different version of libusb (libusb-0.1.4.dylib). i found that version and copied it to the /usr/local/lib directory. it got passed the loading library issue but hit the same No iPhone/iPod found error.

more info about my iphone before i bricked it:
Version: 3.0 (7A341)
Model: MA712LL
IMEI: just kidding
Modem Firmware: 04.05.04_G

Originally Posted by 1handclap

I had only one problem running iRecovery on intel/OS X 10.6.2. That was related to the need to move a shared library to a specific location before iRecovery would run sucessfully. This is a limitation of the way the links to the libraries are compiled into the app.

i hit that problem with one of the version of irecovery too. i compiled and installed libusb but that particular version of irecovery depended on a different version of libusb (libusb-0.1.4.dylib). i found that version and copied it to the /usr/local/lib directory. it got passed the loading library issue but hit the same No iPhone/iPod found error.

more info about my iphone before i bricked it:
Version: 3.0 (7A341)
Model: MA712LL
IMEI: just kidding
Modem Firmware: 04.05.04_G

You do have the iPhone in recovery mode? iTunes is not running.