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How to not upgrade to iOS5

If you follow me on Twitter, you're probably familiar with my iOS5 installation difficulties. Two days into the process, and I've still not been able to update either my iPad (first generation) or iPhone 4. This is—by far—the most frustrated I've been with any Apple upgrade, ever…and that covers a lot of history!

Simply as a means of venting, and perhaps to save someone else from going through what I've gone through (though note that I haven't yet solved the problem), here's what I've gone through to try to upgrade my iPhone and iPad.

Update: On my 48th attempt, my iPhone 4 successfully updated to iOS5. Now, on to the iPad…


First, some background…

The Mac which "owns" my iDevices (iPhone 4, iPad 1, and a fifth-generation iPod touch) is a 2011 iMac (3.4GHz Core i7 with 16GB of RAM) running Mac OS X 10.6.8. It has two external displays connected via the Thunderbolt ports (using MiniDisplayPort adapters), as well as some other USB accessories (printer, card reader) plugged into a USB hub. My iPhone connector is typically plugged into this hub, too.

My iPhone 4 is 100% stock, has never been jailbroken, and was purchased on the iPhone 4's release date last year. My iPad is a 32GB/3G model, bought new on the original release date. It hasn't ever been jailbroken, but it is used as a development machine at Many Tricks, and as such, is used to run beta releases of iOSes. It is presently running the last beta of iOS5.

After hearing that iOS5 had been released, I thought I'd start the upgrade with my iPhone, figuring it'd be easier than the already-beta-running iPad. Turns out that was a bad assumption. I connected my iPhone and was greeted with the 'upgrade available' message in iTunes. I agreed that yes, I wanted the upgrade, then waited for it to download and install.

The first step in the install is a backup, and it's a rather lengthy one—it took about 10 minutes, I'd guess, on my machine. Once that was done, iTunes expanded the installation package, and then, just as the progress box said "Restoring," iTunes gave me this…

Not very good news, and not much helpful information there. Ever the optimist, I decided to try the whole process again (unplugged iPhone, connected again, backed up), only to get the same result. I then found this knowledge base article describing general errors and how to resolve them.

The article lists five things to check (latest version of iTunes, up-to-date OS X, disconnect other USB devices, check security settings, and restart the computer), and I did all five. I unplugged every USB device except the iPhone, which I plugged directly into the back of the computer. I restarted. I even reinstalled iTunes 10.5, and redownloaded the iOS5 package, in case either of them were corrupted.

As far as security settings, I run a fairly open network behind my router, but thought I might as well loosen it up as much as possible. So I set my router's permissions to maximum openness:

That's about as open as I could possibly make it…and still I got the same result. I tried a bunch of additional times, sometimes letting iTunes do the whole "back it up first" routine, and other times, using Option-clicks on Upgrade (and Restore) to point to the downloaded iOS5 upgrade package. I also emptied caches, changed the iPod connection cable, swapped USB ports on the iMac, restarted again, stuck pins in an Android voodoo doll, and crossed my fingers and toes. All results were the same—abject failures. The results of my efforts for the day were something like 37 iPhone installer crash logs. Sigh.

One time, though, I got a slightly different result. That one time, the upgrade actually started, with a progress dialog on the phone and in iTunes. However, somewhere near the end, I got the same "internal error" message as before, and (oh no!) iTunes left my phone in an unusable (bricked) state:

Sigh. At this point, I gave up. After trying a few more restores to iOS5 (no go), and various combinations of the Home and Power keys, I was done. I Option-clicked the Restore button, and selected the last iOS4 release (4.3.5) for my restoration. Suprisingly, this installed perfectly, and (many many hours later), my phone was restored and functional again.

For a change of pace, I tried upgrading my iPad, using the iOS5 bundle that I downloaded from Apple's servers. Unfortunately, I got a very similar error message:

This time, though, there was an error number, which led me to this more-detailed knowledge base article. Unfortunately, the entry for error 3002 is less than helpful:

If you experience this error while updating an iPod touch (2nd generation) or iPhone 3G, please use the standard update or restore process in iTunes (click Update or Restore).

Not much help, given I wasn't updating either of those iDevices. So I gave up on the iPad and just left it running the iOS5 beta, not wanting to risk two bricked devices in one day.

After sleeping off my anger, I decided to try the iPhone again this morning. As I might have expected (were I not eternally optimistic), the results were the same: it wound up bricked again, forcing another restore (which, again, went perfectly) to iOS4.

Below are some closing bits from some of the install error logs; you can see various errors, nothing really consistent, and nothing really useful.

2011-10-13 13:49:42.000 iTunes[12610:2667f]: ASR progress: Sending payload
2011-10-13 13:49:43.000 iTunes[12610:14113]: received kAMDeviceDetached action, device 0x1dd57a40
2011-10-13 13:49:43.000 iTunes[12610:2667f]: : operation 13 progress 46
2011-10-13 13:49:43.000 iTunes[12610:2667f]: ASR progress: Broken pipe
2011-10-13 13:49:43.000 iTunes[12610:2667f]: : operation 13 progress 100
2011-10-13 13:49:43.000 iTunes[12610:2667f]: ASR progress: Finished
2011-10-13 13:49:43.000 iTunes[12610:2667f]: recv(40, 4) failed: connection closed
2011-10-13 13:49:43.000 iTunes[12610:2667f]: unable to read message size: -1
2011-10-13 13:49:43.000 iTunes[12610:2667f]: unable to read message from device
2011-10-13 13:49:43.000 iTunes[12610:2667f]: AMRAuthInstallDeletePersonalizedBundle
2011-10-13 13:49:43.000 iTunes[12610:2667f]: : Restore failed (result = 9)
2011-10-13 13:49:43.000 iTunes[12610:28647]: iTunes: Restore error 9
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASR RESTORE PROGRESS: 92%
ASR RESTORE PROGRESS: 94%
ASR RESTORE PROGRESS: 96%
ASR RESTORE PROGRESS: 98%
ASR: asr: Image failed signature verification
ASR: asr: Failed to read the stream: Authentication error
ASR: __decompressChunk: backing store read at offset 779353072 length 54796 failed with error 80
ASR: __decompressChunk() error: 80
ASR: __decompressChunk: backing store read at offset 779288576 length 64496 failed with error 80
ASR: __decompressChunk() error: 80
ASR STATUS: fail
AppleUSBDeviceMux::sessionUpcall socket is closed, session 0x83617e18 (12345<-lo0->49164 12345<-usb->11289)
ASR: Could not restore - Authentication error
ASR STATUS: fail
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2011-10-13 13:02:54.000 iTunes[12610:1cb37]: AMRAuthInstallDeletePersonalizedBundle
2011-10-13 13:02:55.000 iTunes[12610:1cb37]: : Restore failed (result = 14)
2011-10-13 13:02:55.000 iTunes[12610:1e447]: iTunes: Restore error 14
2011-10-13 13:03:14.000 iTunes[12610:207]: device connected (isDFU = 0)
2011-10-13 13:03:14.000 iTunes[12610:207]: device software does not support nonce generation
2011-10-13 13:03:14.000 iTunes[12610:207]: device software does not support nonce generation
2011-10-13 13:03:14.000 iTunes[12610:207]: iTunes: SCEP 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2011-10-12 16:21:28.000 iTunes[343:207]: restore library built Sep 2 2011 at 02:05:52
2011-10-12 16:21:28.000 iTunes[343:207]: iTunes: iTunes 10.5
2011-10-12 16:21:28.000 iTunes[343:207]: iTunes: Current software version: 8L1
2011-10-12 16:21:28.000 iTunes[343:207]: iTunes: Software payload version: 9A334 (option key)
2011-10-12 16:21:39.000 iTunes[343:1e28b]: iTunes: Specifying Update boot image
2011-10-12 16:21:39.000 iTunes[343:1e28b]: *** UUID C6909A85-D335-4455-AA6C-7439506B179A ***
2011-10-12 16:21:39.000 iTunes[343:1e28b]: requested restore behavior: Update
2011-10-12 16:21:39.000 iTunes[343:1e28b]: amai: _AMAuthInstallBundleCopyBuildIdentityForVariant: variant "Update" isn't published for this device in build manifest
2011-10-12 16:21:39.000 iTunes[343:1e28b]: failed to personalize the restore bundle: Entry not found
2011-10-12 16:21:39.000 iTunes[343:1e28b]: AMRAuthInstallDeletePersonalizedBundle
2011-10-12 16:21:39.000 iTunes[343:1e193]: iTunes: Restore error 3002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2011-10-12 13:51:40.000 iTunes[196:207]: restore library built Sep 2 2011 at 02:05:52
2011-10-12 13:51:40.000 iTunes[196:207]: iTunes: iTunes 10.5
2011-10-12 13:51:40.000 iTunes[196:207]: iTunes: Current software version: 8L1
2011-10-12 13:51:40.000 iTunes[196:207]: iTunes: Software payload version: 9A334 (option key)
2011-10-12 13:51:49.000 iTunes[196:1a007]: iTunes: Specifying Update boot image
2011-10-12 13:51:49.000 iTunes[196:1a007]: *** UUID 16AFB217-3D7F-4393-99CE-D2186ABA22E7 ***
2011-10-12 13:51:49.000 iTunes[196:1a007]: requested restore behavior: Update
2011-10-12 13:51:49.000 iTunes[196:1a007]: amai: _AMAuthInstallBundleCopyBuildIdentityForVariant: variant "Update" isn't published for this device in build manifest
2011-10-12 13:51:49.000 iTunes[196:1a007]: failed to personalize the restore bundle: Entry not found
2011-10-12 13:51:49.000 iTunes[196:1a007]: AMRAuthInstallDeletePersonalizedBundle
2011-10-12 13:51:49.000 iTunes[196:1be2b]: iTunes: Restore error 3002

Unfortunately, that's where the story ends. My iPhone is still running iOS4, and at this point, I'm thinking I may have to try installing the update on another Mac, and then hope I'm able to restore the backup after connecting it back to the iMac. Beyond that, though, I'm all of out ideas.

5 thoughts on “How to not upgrade to iOS5”

  1. You keep saying you were hitting the Upgrade button. Did you ever try to use the Restore button to install iOS 5? Usually you cannot upgrade from a beta OS to the final version but must restore instead.

  2. I had the same problem with my 3GS, but it went away when I used the other USB port on my computer. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but my 1Gen iPad install went without a hitch on the same port. (Maybe also a coincidence.)

  3. I had most of these issues, but put it down to the world + dog trying to upgrade at the same time.

    I waited 8 hours, tried again, and all was well.

  4. I had the same problem on my iPhone 4. I tried about five times, each time it took around 10 mins to back up my iPhone. So I copied the backup folder (in ~/Library/iTunes/Mobile Backups/) to the desktop, wiped the iPhone using Erase All Contents and Settings on the phone itself (to reduce the time taken to backup) and tried again, and again and finally after a dozen or so attempts, it worked.
    Once the phone restarted, I quit iTunes, copied the backup folder from the Desktop back to its correct location, and relaunched iTunes and let it restore the settings.
    I reckon if you keep trying Rob, it will work. It takes persistence.

    The steps I described was just to save the 10 minute delay between attempts.

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