Fix iTunes Always Wanting to Restore or set up as new iPhone / iPod

Just a quick post to help people out with this odd problem with your iPhone or iPod thinking its just been restored and only gives you the option to set up as a new iPhone or restore from your last backup (which might be some time ago) either way it leaves you with no option but to lose data!

The fix itself is quite easy but as with all these kinds of things do so at your own risk, at the very worse you would have to restore your last good backup but this is really unlikely. This was tested on windows but I am told it works for Mac as well.

• 1) Open iTunes
• 2) Plug in iPhone/iPod/iPad
• 3) Wait for set up as new / restore screen to display.
• 4) Select restore from backup and choose a backup, which backup it is doesn’t matter but you may as well select the latest.
• 5) Press continue and after a second or two you will see a small box pop up with a progress bar saying estimating time remaining. Pull the cord out as soon as the screen changes to this.
• 6) Your phone will probably still show its lock screen and then go to a “restore in progress screen”
• 7) Now quickly press and hold the power and home buttons until your iPhone switches itself off (its the force power off/reset)
• 8) Now power up your phone again and plug into itunes. You should find that everything is back to normal.

I haven’t got a clue what caused this but it may have be an unsucsessfull wifi sync that didnt finish or something when the phone was last restored. Either way this fix worked for me, running iTunes 10.5 Beta 7 and iOS5

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