Safety net – How to put your iPhone in DFU mode

Alex — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:10:14 +0000

So.. you did something wrong and your iPhone won’t work anymore. Perhaps, like me, you wanted to change the root ssh password and as a result you got the SpringBoard (the iPhone window manager ) restarting every 10 seconds and a popup telling you to edit home items. Or perhaps you installed a buggy app that crashed your system. Or, maybe, an upgrade went wrong.

Don’t despair. There may still be hope. It’s called the iPhone DFU mode.
I’m not sure what DFU stands for, but what it does is simple – it puts your iPhone in the “out of the factory” clean state; sort of like having a clean hard drive to your computer, without Windows, Linux or anything else. DFU mode is a security mode that lets iTunes see once again the iPhone and install the latest firmware on.

So, how to get to DFU?
Watch the following video, or keep in mind 7, 2, 10: for 7 seconds keep the “power/lock” and “home” buttons pressed simultaneously, until the iPhone’s screen goes black; keep them both pressed an extra 2 seconds, then release the “power” button and continue holding the “home” button pressed. At the end of 10 seconds, iTunes(which was opened already) should see the iPhone; you can let go, the toy is in DFU mode, you can now “reformat” it to the latest firmware (agree with whatever iTunes is saying related to “Restore”) so that you can jailbreak and unlock it afterwards.
Sure, you lost all your apps, music and videos, but that’s a pretty small price to pay for getting your iPhone back up and running, right?

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Safety net – How to put your iPhone in DFU mode