j.a.x.i.a.n » iPhone 4 Restoring Issue iTunes Error 1004

I was restoring my iPhone 4 last night because it had some issues (mainly because of some themes and packages I installed from Cydia). I had saved my SHSH blobs before and since I know that the last Jailbreak-able firmware is 4.0.1, I thought I will restore my iPhone to this firmware (since my phone was currently on 4.0).

Things seemed to be quite normal as I proceeded with the restoring process:

I backed up my phone.
Downloaded the correct firmware files.
Put my iPhone on DFU mode.
Pressed option + restore on iTunes.
Selected the firmware to restore to.

Once I started the process, iTunes began the whole process of restoring the iPhone. It began preparing the iPhone for Restore and checking with Apple if this is a valid Restore and what not. Then the whole progress bar came up on the iPhone and it started installing the firmware on my iPhone. I was pretty happy at this point oblivious to the fact that its going to give me a stupid error in a few minutes.

The progress bar went upto like 80% and then it started to check with Apple again. And then, all of a sudden it aborted the restoring process, put the iPhone in Recovery Mode and gave me an Error on iTunes. “Unable to Restore – Error 1004″ – Something like that. My heart jumped! I thought I messed up the hosts file and went back and edited the hosts file (you know to make iTunes think its talking to Apples servers when its actually talking to Cydia). I rebooted my computer and tried again – No Luck. Still kept giving me the same old error. I tried and tried again, editing and saving the hosts file, rebooting for like about 5 or 10 times and it still gave me the same Error and goes to recovery mode.

I thought that its over now. I thought Apple must have secretly patched up the SHSH Blobs thing or somehow patched up something so we can’t restore to a firmware version below the latest firmware. My heart sank. I had just bricked my very expensive brand new iPhone 4 and with no new Jailbreak in the near future. (Since the Dev Team announced that there will not be a Jailbreak for iOS 4.0.2 and 3.2.2 – Although its worthy to note that users with iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2G (Non-MC model) will be able to Jailbreak on 4.0.2 using RedSn0w). I was using iTunes 9.2.1 for Mac by the way.

I was just about to give up when I thought of an idea. Maybe if I can get the iPhone out of the Recovery Loop, it might fix the problem – but how does one get around to doing that? Well, its more simple than you think. Theres this handy little tool developed by the0rkus and CoreDevTeam. Its called RecBoot.

You can download the latest version of RecBoot for Mac here.

I don’t think its released for windows yet because of some copyright issues they are having. But you can check for the windows version at their website here.

After I got that 1004 Error, it kept sending my iPhone into a Recovery Loop (as I said before). Heres what I did to hopefully fix the iPhone.

I plugged my iPhone in. iTunes detected it as it was in recovery mode.
I opened up RecBoot.
Then I clicked “Exit Recovery Mode” button on RecBoot

Miraculously, RecBoot kicked the iPhone out of the Recovery Loop and rebooted to the Emergency Screen! It was fixed! Then, I just activated the phone (using the AT&T sim that it came with) and voila! I had an activated iPhone 4 restored to iOS 4.0.1. Then I simply went to JailBreakMe.com and slid to Jailbreak. It did its thing and when it was over, there was Cydia on my Home screen. Oh the joy! I opened Cydia and Unlocked my phone! Now my iPhone is Activated, Unlocked and Jailbroken on iOS 4.0.1. I saw a lot of people facing these issues all over the internet so I thought I’ll just share my solution that fixed this Error.