Unbricking Your iPod Touch with the Manual DFU Procedure
If you are as curious as I am, you’ve probably managed to brick your iPod touch by now. I bricked mine within 24 hours of owning it. It happened sometime after I installed Apollo and changed the root password using SSH and the passwd command. After I did that, my SpringBoard process stopped working, and was continually getting restarted by launchd because it was crashing consistently (according to “ps -A”). Nice loop really! Anyhoo, I renamed the /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/SpringBoard binary to SpringBoard.bak (so launchd would quit trying to restart it), and ran it myself with ./SpringBoard.bak. I got a really funky error message like this:
ABORT: Unable to register "PurpleSystemEventPort" port, 1103 unknown error code
Now that is a cool error message! (note to self: Use random colors in future error messages).
At one point, I was able to run SpringBoard on the command line and it would stay up, and I could use the interface. Here’s a cool trick: Run SpringBoard from the command line over SSH, and then Ctrl+Z it to suspend it. Notice that your UI is totally frozen on the iPod. Cool stuff! Type “fg” and the UI comes back to life. This much fun should be illegal.
At this point, my Windows XP computer would no longer make the happy “ding dong” sound when I plugged the iPod into the USB port. And, of course, iTunes could no longer detect the iPod. D’oh! This is when I started to get a bit scared. I googled for an iPod touch reset utility like I had used on my 1st generation iPod Nano, but no luck.
After some googling and some help from the good folks on #iphone, I learned that I needed to get the iPod into “DFU mode”, which is a special mode that will indicate to iTunes that there is a bricked iPod that needs to be restored. Here’s the procedure to manually put the iPod Touch into DFU mode:
- Turn on your iPod (in my case it would only get as far as displaying the Apple logo
- Hold the power and home buttons down (the iPod will power off after 10 seconds, but keep holding those buttons down)
- After the iPod powers off, release the power button (but keep holding the home button down)
- After a couple more seconds, you should hear that magical “ding dong” that means the iPod is coming back alive, and that Windows has detected it. You may even see a little “New hardware” popup in Windows. It is now safe to release the home button, and your iPod is in DFU mode.
- Now iTunes will see it as a DFU’ed iPod and should ask you to automatically restore its firmware.
- iTunes has to download the new firmware, and it takes a while, so go make a sandwich.
In case you’re wondering, the “power button” is the one on top, and the “home button” is the one under the screen.
Happy iUnBricking!
110 comments to “Unbricking Your iPod Touch with the Manual DFU Procedure”
By the way, when I unbricked and reinstalled installer.app, it told me to not use the passwd program to change the password on firmware 1.1.3 because it’ll make SpringBoard (the main desktop launcher program) crash continually. Well, that’s what I did on 1.1.4 and had the same problem, so the advice probably stands for 1.1.4 as well.
I was using 1.1.4 and looped in same problem.
Thanks for the information.
Thanks, you’re a lifesaver!
Thank you sooo much i thought it was broke and i did not have the insurance to turn mine in for a new ipod touch!
*evil scientist voice on* Innnnterrrresting! *evil scientist voice off*
Thanks a lot for that! I’d just installed OpenSSH and changed the root password, only to have – I assume – Summerboard go nuts on me. Since the power and home buttons seem to operate via software rather than hardware, you have to use the command-line to save yourself (thank the Budda for *nix based OS’s).
THANK YOU for posting this. I found you via google, and i’m so glad I did. Now I know what caused it! That darn passwd app. That’s the problem with iPhone/iPod Touch tutorials, some of them are out of date, and you really have to be careful. No worries though, I was able to change the name of springboard like you did and AFP in to copy some data off. (ebooks, etc)
All will be well soon, I just wish I didn’t just cost myself over an hour of my life putting this thing back the way it was. Oh well, at least we have ijailbreak.com :)
Could it work if you passwd change to the older password alpine ?
No, I tried changing the password back to “alpine” with the passwd program, but the problem persisted.
Dude, you saved my bacon. I can report that your button-fu works with a Mac as well as with Windows.
So what made this happen? Was it because I changed the root password? The security nerd in me insisted that I do this, blissfully unaware that there were system applications that are HARD-CODED to expect a particular password.
I can also report that, consistent with Dave’s experience, resetting the password back to its original value did NOT help.
So of course I’m going to try the whole thing again. I was too deliriously happy with my multiple HP calculators to go back to being in jail.
Dave:
I have documented my little iPod freak-out (pretty much identical to yours) on my blog, and plagiarized your instructions blatantly (with attribution). I hope you don’t mind.
I kind of think that this is important. I didn’t find anything on the Apple support site that explains how to set an iPod Touch to I AM A BRICK PLEASE FIX ME mode.
Man, good thing i found this. I was having same problem. I changed the password via terminal on mac. And this went wonky.
So there’s no other way to change the password? I’m stuck with alpine?
Jat,
To my knowledge, you cannot change the root password but you should be able to restrict ssh access by editing sshd_config to only allow people to connect using key-based authentication instead of password-based.
Good luck!
Damn, thanks for this guide: 18 hours into ownership I bricked it as well, didn’t know I had to disable the lock code, itunes doesn’t initialize properly with it enabled apparently…
I tried this but only get the “USB device not recognized” message on my computer, and the recovery screen on the iPod Touch. Any other tips?
mate you are a life saver!! i have been searching the net for the past hour trying to find out how to stop my ipod, which was stuck in a DFU mode loop, untill i found you :)
thank you so much
Thanks you so much, a friend of mine had her ipod touch bricked. And she just bought it, this saved her a trip to the store and possibly the warranty being voided.
Again, thanks a bunch!
thank you. i love you.
Your method was the only one that has worked for me. I think my iphone was stuck in a DFU loop and was not being recognized by iTunes. Thanks you are a lifesaver.
Life saver… thought my iphone was dead :P… all of this for trying to crack intelliscreen :S
thanks so much…!!
Thanks man, Really helped me…your The Man :)
THANK YOU !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ive been searching for about a week – nothing worked but this!!!
I cant seem to get mine in DFU mode….im doing it correct but my ipod wont turn back on after ive turned it off automatically. any help?
Thank you!!!! I was starting to believe that I can’t have nice Things!
…what can I say? I’m speechless! Thank you!
Omg i was all most crying when mine bricked and when u stated wait for the ding dong noise i held the home button in and wallah it worked.
I ow you so much thank you so so so much.
Hey man… thanks a lot, I think it worked…
I was so desperate that I couldn’t even sleep well
Thanks again and right now I’ll go to the kitchen to
make a sandwich… hahaha
Blessings.
Omg I was so scared that I broke it loll.
Thank you so much it worked :]<3
i was so pissed whenmy ipod stopped, you are a life saver. Thank god for the internet. u da man. Thanks so so much
Thats really cool, thanks! Although now my Itunes (which is the latest one) is saying Software for my ipod is not available? any ideas?
Phoenix: I’ve never seen that error. Have you tried googling the exact phrase that iTunes gives you? Perhaps put quotes around the phrase in your google search?
Man!!!! YOU ARE A GENIUS!!! Thank you!! Thank you soooooooooooooo much I suffered with this problem for like a month!! Thanks again!! ^^
windows will not recoginze my ipod after i tryed to put intno dfu for some reason it is stuck at the app;e boot logo and windows does not see my ipod at all for the odiest reason i have no ideal
my ipod is locked for a really long time and i dont have the original computer that it was synced to so does any body no wat i can do
DUDE thank you your a life saver.
man, i thought i killed my ipod. thanks so much im so relieved!
Not good! i did this to my ipod to fix it and when i went to restore it, i got this error message. “Software for the ipod not available. make sure you have the latest version of iTunes and try again”. i do have the latest version of iTunes and it still doesn’t work. Help
saved my life
I have the EXACT same problem as Adam! please help!
Adam and Ryan: download firmware from http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/
Then do the procedure as explained by Dave but: don’t just click on restore but hold the shift button (Windows) or Option button (Mac). You’ll get a dialog box allowing you to choose the firmware to install.
This said, I have an iTouch which is stuck in DFU. Uploading firmware always breaks with several errors, like 1600, 6 and some more. Right now I’m trying to upload 1.1.1 and it’s taking ages, already an hour now. That’s something new.
THANK YOU SOOOOOOO MUCH! while jailbreakin’ in the past i have bricked it 4 times, and i had to send it off to apple. now my warranty is gone, so while installing the 3.0 software, it got bricked. yay! THx
thanks you from the bottom of my heart. Worked like a charm!!!!!!
Installed the 3.0 beta torrent and it worked fine for a week or 2 but today i was welcomed by a bright purple connect to itunes screen. When i connected to itunes it gave me a huge error!!!!
When i followed your instructions set me back to 2.2.1 with no problem. Once again thank you SO much!!!!
well if anyone can help me out, i tried jailbreakin mine and i messed up somewhere . so now my itouch 2g just goe’s into a REstore mode loop. it wont’ come out of it. i’ve tried restoring it in dfu mode but no luck same thing keeps happening. :(
THANK YOU!!!! YOU TURNED MY IBRICK BACK INTO A IPOD TOUCH!!!!
For anyone who tries to click the restore button and bets the error message on windows do this 1.hold shift and click restore and a box should pop up. 2.go to the c: drive and go to the name of the computer. 3.click on roaming. 4.click on app data. 5.click on iTunes. 6.click on iPod software updates or restores (it is the first one at the top.) 7.click on the latest software you have which is the first one givin. Now you should have a bar saying extracting and let it do it’s thing and you should be set
By the way the c: drive is the hard drive
The c: is located on the my computer tab thing
You are a life saver, thank you so much for this simple way to unbrick. . . I didn’t even know what bricked meant. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thanks. This helped me out :)
thanks mate, this helped me out a lot.