How to get a jailbroken iPhone out of a locked screen loop
Jan 25, '10 07:30:00AM
Contributed by: Anonymous
On jailbroken iPhones where sbsettings is installed (nearly all of them) and the 'autolock' toggle is also installed, there is a chance of getting permanently stuck in a lock screen loop. When you slide to unlock the iPhone, it unlocks for a 10th of a second, then locks again.
The problem is that this unlock-lock loop stays through a restore. Try as you might: DFU mode, restarting, restoring from backup, etc., all will end with an iPhone in the same loop. This problem is caused by a bug in sbsettings' autolock toggle.
This is how I fixed mine when it happened to my phone last night...
Now when I mean "fixed," I mean getting all my photos, SMS, calendars, contacts, app settings, call log, etc. back, but the phone is left unjailbroken. Since we have to do a restore through iTunes, the phone will be unjailbroken when finished. A re-jailbreak is necessary from the get-go.
- Plug in your locked iPhone and manually force a backup (command-click on its icon in iTunes, select Backup. Let's say this backup happens at 2:15am.
- Do a restore in iTunes.
- When the restore is complete, it asks you if you want to backup your phone from a previous backup. I picked one from a few days ago.
- This is an old version of my iPhone, still without all the stuff I've done in the last few days. Force a backup in iTunes. Let's say this backup happens at 2:25am. If the restore does not get rid of the lock-autolock issue, you'll have to go farther back in your restore history. This trick might work without backing up to a previous version of your iPhone; I did not test this from a vanilla backup.
- Wait a few moments.
- After a few moments, on the vanilla iPhone, set autolock to Never; do not change anything else.
- Do a backup of this iPhone, noting that you have changed only one setting. Let's say this backup happens at 2:30am.
- Navigate to your user's Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup folder in Finder.
- There will be several, if not a dozen or more, backups of your iPhone here. All of them will have really long alpha-numeric names. Sort by Date Modified, and you should note that the 2:15, 2:25, and 2:30 backups are the three most recent ones. Go into the 2:30 backup.
- In the 2:30 (auto-lock never) backup, you will see more than a thousand files. Mine showed over 1800. Sort these by Date Modified.
- If everything comes out right, there should only be a couple dozen files that were modified in the last 10-25 minutes. For me there were about 40. Copy all of these files.
- Go to the 2:15 backup, paste the copied files, replacing those that already exist.
- Go back to iTunes, and restore from the 2:15 backup.
All of my messages, settings, app data, music, photos, etc. came back on a working iPhone. A re-jailbreak is necessary to get jailbreak apps back, but at least you have a working phone with all the important stuff back.
There are no instructions online for solving this problem. A few forums say that "ur screwed maaan" or "iBrick, lolz" or "try the Genius Bar" but nothing useful. I have found no resource for solving this problem anywhere. This trick something that I though of, tried, and it worked. I hope that it helps someone else gets their iPhone unstuck.
[robg adds: I haven't tested this one.]
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