One of the most commonly asked questions by iPhone users who want to jailbreak their iPhone is: "Is possible to recover if things go horribly wrong while trying to hack their iPhone?"
The answer to that question is "Yes" and the process to do it is called "ReVirginize" or Restoring your iPhone.
Another reason to revirginize the iPhone or iPhone 3G would be to revert the iPhone back to factory settings i.e. locked state if you wanted to take your jailbroken and/or unlocked iPhone to an Apple Store because of some hardware issue.
You can follow the simple step-by-step guide to re-virginize or restore your iPhone after the jump.
Before we start, please note that the step-by-step guide involves restoring your iPhone so you should know that this would mean that all your personal data from your iPhone, including songs, videos, contacts, photos, calendar information, and any other data will be wiped out and your iPhone’s settings will be restored to their factory settings. However, you always have the option to recover your personal data from the backup.
Here is the step-by-step guide to revirginize or restore your jailbroken iPhone:
- Connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC and select your iPhone from the list of devices in iTunes. If things had gone horribly wrong while hacking your iPhone and iTunes does not detect your iPhone then you will need to put it in DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode.
- You can follow these steps to put your iPhone in DFU mode (this is required only if iTunes does not recognize your iPhone):
- Connect your iPhone to your computer.
- Turn iPhone off.
- Hold power and home together for 10 seconds (exactly).
- Release power but keep holding home until the computers beeps (observed on a PC) as a USB device is recognized.
- A few seconds later iTunes should detect your iPhone.
- You can follow these steps to put your iPhone in DFU mode (this is required only if iTunes does not recognize your iPhone):
- In the Summary Tab, click on the Restore button.
- iTunes should prompt you if you would wish to take a backup of your iPhone before restoring. Select Backup.
- After the backup is taken select the Restore option when iTunes prompts you.
- Once the restore process has completed your iPhone will restart and the Apple logo will appear while booting up.
- After the restore is complete and your iPhone restarts you will see the “Connect to Activate” screen. You must continue to keep your iPhone connected to complete activation.
- The last step is to set up your iPhone either from a backup or set up as a "new iPhone". If you are planning to take the iPhone to the Apple Store, its advisable to setup your iPhone as a "new iPhone" else you can select the date of your backup that you want to restore to. You can always follow the above procedure to restore from a backup at a later date.
As always, don’t forget to tell us know how it goes in the comments below.
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