My iPhone Locked me Out by itself! #TrueStory #MachinesTakingOver #TheStruggleIsReal

About 2 weeks back i was hit by a phenomenon what seemed like total amnesia but under closer inspection it was found that my iPhone had actually locked me out of using it at all! 

My story beckons that what happened in IRobot could actually happen for Real! 

To get you guys up to speed im currently using an iPhone 4S running on IOS 5.1.1( why? i hate the idea of upgrading to the latest firmware on an older device.. bad experience with the iphone 3g..)anyways...

About 2 weeks ago i was hit by what i thought at the time to be a temporary case of amnesia. I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and entered in my passcode.. which weirdly didnt work.. i then tried a few other possible combinations which weirdly also didnt work.. i then started to think that i had forgotten my password.. which was weird because i put my passcode into my phone at least 100 times a day how could i have forgotten it?? anyways decided to leave it and carry on with my daily routine.. later on without thinking i pulled my phone out of my pocked and by what i thought to be reflex of my hand or some would say muscle memory i unlocked my phone without even thinking about it.. which was weird.. i was left with the case of thinking i might have suffered a mild case of amnesia? .. totally disturbing thought for anyone to have..

well a week went by and then another and then this phenomenon hit again! i woke up in the morning half asleep entered in my password and bham it didnt work.. at the time i was laying down half asleep and entered it again and then tried a few different passwords half asleep and then bham! i was hit with this warning messages after every attempt that i had tried to enter in my password the time was extended until it reached a waiting period of 60 minutes twice after which it was completely disabled.

 

When i reached the point where my iPhone needed to be connected to itunes you must know that this was maybe 4 to 5 hours later .. so i connect my phone to itunes and then it enables again, but the passcode still needs to be entered in!! so anyways i decided to go on a hunt to find a solution! it turns out that i wasnt the only one this has happened to before! but the only cure to getting the phone would be to restore it to factory settings! but wait restoring it would mean that it would update it to ios 8!!! i dont want that do i????

anyways i set off to find a solution to fix this problem.Every forum out there states that the only fix to this problem is to connect it to a computer it was previously synced with before and then restore.. and no not an option because then it would update!the other option was to put the phone into recovery mode and then do a restore from there! but as i do this i realise its going to update the iphone to ios 8 so another dead end!! 

iPhone in Recovery mode

Now if you have previously jailbroken any iphone device you would know that you could restore your iphone to a clean/fresh ios version by pressing shift and clicking restore at the same time which would allow me to select an .ipsw( the ios file format for iphone ios software is an .ipsw file). So there was a thought which i thought might just work! so i head over to ipswdownloader.com (which in my opinion is the best place to get .ipsw file formats for any ios version id say)..yeah so i select my device, model and firmware thinking that i could download a fresh version of ios 5.1.1 and restore it to my device.

Now if you have previously updated your ios software from one version to another you would know that downloading an update could be anything greater than 700mb! 700mb in South Africa with the line speeds that Say 4mb/s but only actually deliver 1mb/s to you can be a bit of a pain to get to. 

So anyways i download the file and leave it overnight to download. 

I awake the next morning to see that the file has been successfully downloaded and now i can finally get to restoring my iphone.. but it seemed that i was in for a surprise sadly!! 

I connected my phone to itunes in recovery mode, held down shift, clicked restore and had selected the fresh .ipsw that i had just waited whole night for.. it starts to load.. and then bham!!!!

a sign popss up that looks like the biggest sign in the world after i read it!! ( it wasnt that big though lol)

ok so whats this now?? why didnt it restore? it was a clean .ipsw file it should have worked!!!

so back to the drawing board.. so to say...

it turns out that the error 3194 happens when iTunes tries to validate the downloaded restore file( .ipsw) and is unable to be validated by apple because they areno longer signing ios 5.1.1! So basically you cant use an older firmware unless you work around the security that apple has put in place.

Ok so that means i need to bypass the security they put in place? ( at this point im thinking oh well its either i bipass the security or il have to update! so i chose to bipass it i mean ive come this far why not right? 

So what this actually entails obtaining something called shsh blobs which infact are a small piece of data that is part of Apples digital signature protocol for ios restores and updates, desgined to control the ios versions that users can install on their ios devices, generally only allowing the newest ios version to be installed.

ok so how does this work and where do i get this?? 

i find this is possible to obtain but i actually need to first download a program called tiny umbrella! and then my problem would be solved!!  

A bit of insight into tiny umbrella :

Tiny Umbrella is a usefull application that was especially designed to provide users with a means of saving the shsh blobs for their devices. Thus Tiny umbrealla can also help in restoring your iphone or other ios device using a saved shsh and by starting the tss server. This way, with tiny umbrella you can restore firmware of your device in a really simple manner. 

So again.... i download tiny umbrella hoping that it would solve my problem.. i start it up and click on resore! and then it starts to load ..................and then it stops.. the phone needs to be unlocked with the passcode (which i dont have) to continue!! dammit im becoming frustrated now.. what do i do? it seems like im being forced into a corner and beaten up and told that i have no choice but to update!!! 

So i finally let bigons be bigons and said ok lets update to ios 8.1 which was given much higher reviews than ios 8.0. I then go into itunes and click on restore and update..

The update starts to download... it goes from 6h..to 7h...to 12h...14h...20h... wait what?? it just keeps climbing!! so anyways i thought it must be the line or computer screwing with me so i leave it for the entire day.. 

at 11:30 pm the current status of the ios 8.1 download was sitting as:

Wait after a whole day it says 25 hours? is this crazy????? is this my line speed or is this actually the apple servers acting up because its a sunday??

its now 2:00 am the current download status of the ios download is at: 

if im not mistaken the line should be atleast a 2mb/s that was upgraded to a 4mb/s line by telkom so they say.. so its either the connection to webafrica (the host provider of the adsl line im using) or the apple servers.

By just taking a look at the time required to download the update its totall ridiculous disregarding the fact that i just just spent my whole weekend trying to get around upgrading and now when i have to i have to wait more than 25 hours just so that the update can download!!  and during this time im left with well a bricked iphone really! its nothing more than just a brick in this state!! 

So anyways i think il give it a rest now and pick up where this update left off with in the morning.. lets hope the update is complete by the morning.. keep your fingers crossed!!! 

To be continued with an update of the situation at hand... Leave your comments below xx