What a pigging nightmare! Long story short, the answer is DFU under Windows, if you want to read the epoch below, feel free.

I’m going to use this post to hopefully chronicle what I have done to resolve the issue that’s spanned the past 24 hours of my life. While I dont want to sound too dramatic, we use our phones these days as much more than communication devices – we have our normal phone/text/browser/games, but we also use them for banking, two factor authenticators, password storage devices. The smartphone has become my most personal and most important item in my digital life because not only does it keep me in touch (especially these days) with families and friends I cant see or get to every day, but also my job and my method of 2FA for my home server, my main email, my websites, everything…. and with that said, you can wholly blame me for installing a BETA iOS version on my phone.

Now, yes, I know. Stupid. Yes, I know, my fault. I get it, its fine, I accept it.

So the beta has been quite buggy with a few of my apps, I use a Mac Mini with macOS Monterey (I know, compounding the stupidities here) but I had my backup of my devices (iPad, watch, phone etc) so figured all was good. I figured it was easy enough to ‘downgrade’ from the latest 15 beta to 14.7.1 (latest stable) so attempted to do so. Took a backup, downloaded an ipsw and…..

Problem 1 – IPSW files

Bloody Apple – in their hubris they do not have any public facing download servers for their firmware files. I tried downloading direct links, they either failed or downloaded and my Mac insisted there was some kind of corruption. I dont want to scour random websites for IPSWs, I have an iPhone 12 Mini so can’t jailbreak it (sometimes I found that the jailbreak tools actually work better at restoring files than Apple’s own iTunes/Finder apps). I have an Unraid server, installed a file downloader onto it (Aria2) and used it to download (eventually) the latest iOS 15 beta and the 14.7.1 stable for my model of iPhone.

Problem 2 – restoring the IPSW

So, my phone at the moment is still on the beta, I connect it to the Mac, hold option and restore the 14.7.1 IPSW through finder. The process starts and fails, error 3014. I presume it must have completed somewhat because my phone is now stuck in recovery mode, I cant get back to the homescreen. Fine. Reboot the phone and the Mac, try again, nothing. Finder wont update the phone at all – I then go through all the error codes above, including attempts that dont even render a reboot of the phone to initialise the installation.

Great. Fucked.

I try all the above steps to reinstall the iOS beta IPSW, same results. Nothing is working.

Problem 3 – replacement phone

Without going into details, I have a lot of things going on right now and I REALLY need to have a working phone. I usually have a backup handset but at the moment it’s on extended loan to a friend, another friend of mine was really kind to give me her backup and now at least I can do whatever I need to and Im contactable. Unfortunately due to the age of the backup I cant restore my settings. Which is really bad when…

Problem 4 – your phone is your 2FA

My server, and my main email have 2FA. When you setup your 2FA you are given restore codes, I knew I had these for my email (I hoped Id saved them) but at this point in shit outta luck about my server and the other 2FA I have set up within the device. I found the codes for my email, but the rest of the services I cant get access to until I get a successful restore of my backup… and believe me, we’ll get to that little bloody nugget later. My only choice now that I’m unable to restore the device at all, that I have to go to an Apple Store (the mini is still under warranty thank God) and get it replaced.

Problem 5 – restore mode/DFU mode

During my continual panic I’m still trying different devices to restore my phone. I have my Mac Mini, as well as a Windows 10 laptop, and a PC that has the latest Windows 11 beta installed (okay, I like bleeding edge software, sue me). Attempts to use these machines to restore the iPhone also gave me the errors listed above. The phone gets part way through the install, or doesnt start the install, and fails with an error in Finder/iTunes on Windows.

I remember from back when I used to Jailbreak iPhones that there was a second restore/recovery mode called DFU. On the newer phones you tap vol up, vol down, then hold power – this will take you to the recovery mode. If you press vol up, vol down, hold power and wait for the screen to turn off, then hold vol down and power for 5 seconds, then hold vol down (all whilst your phone is connected to a computer via cable) the phone will be detected by the computer and iTunes/Finder will prompt to restore it, all the while the iPhone’s screen must remain black.

…. and I couldnt get the fucker into DFU at all.

**** intermission **** I go to bed because I’m to stressed and pissed off to do anything else.

Day 2 – with a clear head I start all the above again. Continual fails, again. I watch video after video on Youtube and keep trying to get the phone into DFU, because I’m convinced that this is the answer – I know nothing about DFU mode, but Ive always considered it a ‘better’ way to restore the phone, deeper or something. Whatever. So I keep trying and… I do it! Excellent I think, I go straight to the Mac and start restoring the firmware. I think my issue is that I was holding power and vol down for too long when the device screen was black, it was just rebooting.

But still a fail. I dont know what to do, I put it back into DFU again and a fail with the beta, no luck with the stable and I’m fucked again. I book an appointment at the closest genius bar and hang my head in shame for my failures and continual errors as stated above. I pride myself in being a geek, an enthusiast, a person who doesnt quit in the face of something that gives me shit. Kind of like Superman 😉

My last ditch effort, the last thing I can think of that I havent yet done is to use DFU on iTunes on my Windows devices. My Windows 10 laptop is the most stable, so I switch it on, put my iPhone into DFU and (as at least 30 times before) I restore the stable firmware…

IT BLOODY WORKS

It literally took a Windows 10 laptop to save my iPhone, to save me a trip to the Apple Store (bloody miles away) and saved my hair from becoming any more grey than it is. The phone restores with the stable iOS, great. Sigh of relief. However..

Problem 6 – iOS restore backup

I skip over to my Mac and click restore my backup from the previous day, hopeful I can get all the 2FA back on track and the software profiles etc reinstalled…. and… no, of course not. And this is because of a) my backup is encrypted, I cant remember the password and b) as I would find out when I remembered the password, the backup was for iOS 15, not iOS 14 and therefore would not restore to the older more stable firmware.

FUCK MY LIFE

Anyway, I cross every finger, pinky, toesy, and peepee and try to restore the iOS 15 beta. Success, straight into DFU and it installs the beta. Great. Restore my backup through the Mac, restores fine and the apps are all there, my 2FA is safe and all the data is there, awesome.

Right now, I’m just waiting for the apps to reinstall. Im going to check through the 2FA and disable it, then most likely restore the stable version if iOS if there’s still issues with apps post-clean and restore, but I really wanted to get this written down if not to tell people what to do, then just for me to vent and document what happened so if it happens again I have a reference. I understand all the do’s and dont’s of beta software, Ive worked on iPhones and Android phones in the past and managed to get them back up and running fine, but this was a saga. I think the worst part was my Mac was unable to reinstall the firmware at all – this could be due to Monterey but really I think it’s something that’s just not quite there. Yes, I made errors, but the function of restoring IPSWs (either selectively or through the system itself) is a feature, its built in, it should work on a Mac better than a Windows machine but it took Windows 10 and the iTunes program to get my phone back to a state that was useable. I’m not smart enough to know why one worked over the other, but I’m just glad that it did. If anyone ever reads this, I hope it helps you, if you read it and chuckle at my misfortunes then I’m glad it made you smile 🙂

Time to pass out now and never mess with beta software again 🙁