I Know The Guy Who Owns This Place

Sometimes you wonder if a project was worth it.  Upgrading my jailbroken iPhone turned out to be one those projects.

I’d previously upgraded iPhone 4 to a jailbroken iOS 4.3.2 via  PwnageTool.  I remember there were one or two tricks that I had to figure out, but it was otherwise very straightforward (especially since I’m not carrier unlocking it.)  Recently, Apple released 4.3.3 to address complaints it tracked too much of your whereabouts by logging wifi points in that area.

I really didn’t feel impelled to have this only-slightly less big-brothery fix.  However, iTunes browbeat me into wanting to upgrade by incessantly asking me to do so every time I synced the phone.  This weekend I decided to finally do it, figuring my phone would be down for at most an hour.  That turned out to be optimistic.

The 4.3.3 upgrade

I downloaded the latest PwnageTool and Apple’s iOS 4.3.3 firmware for iPhone.  I ran through the PwnageTool expert mode and generated my new ISFW file.  (If you’re already lost as to what I’m talking about,  iClarified.com has a great post on HowTo Jailbreak an iPhone with PwnageTool.)  ISFW generated, iPhone in DFU mode — should be all set.

I told iTunes to restore the iPhone with the jailbroken ISFW file and off it went… until…

Failure #1:  iTunes failed the restore with error 1601 (or sometimes 21)

So off to fix it…

• The first couple posts I found on that error said if you’re upgrading a jailbroken phone to another jailbroken version, you don’t need to be in DFU mode, you can just do a restore.   That didn’t fix it.
• The next set of solutions I read all pointed to iTunes being the problem (including Apple’s support site) and that reinstalling iTunes and the Mobile Devices support would solve it.  Apple has a KB article on how to do that.   That didn’t fix it.
• The next set of solutions said to plug the phone directly into the Mac instead of a USB hub.  I had been using the USB port on my Apple monitor; the same one port & cable I use to sync everyday.   So I plugged the phone it to a USB port on the front of my Mac.  Viola! No more error 1601.

iTunes happily installed the new jailbroken software on the phone and I was good to go.

Or so I thought.

Failure #2: No Service?

My freshly minted iPhone 4 with 4.3.3 installed only was getting 1 bar of signal strength in my home office.  I normally have full bars.  The other clue there was a problem was that the AT&T and 3G indicators weren’t showing up either.

Argh.  Now I’ve got the new software, but lost my carrier service.  Not a good tradeoff.

Clearly I had to get that fixed right away.  So I googled for “iPhone jailbreak 1 bar service”:

• It’s a common problem apparently and nearly all the hits pointed at ultrasn0w issues.  So I launched Cydia on my phone and installed the latest ultrasn0w.  Didn’t fix it.
• Found a bunch of posts all talking about an “ultrasn0w fixer” app that Cydia released for this issue.   Followed those steps, but never found the fixer application they were talking about.  (I realized later that it was unnecessary since the version of ultrasn0w I had originally installed already contained that fix.)
• Since I couldn’t find the fixer app everyone pointed to, I found someone saying you can go back to ultrasn0w 1.2 which means copying the bits to your phone manually in a way that Cydia will autoinstall it on device boot.  iClarified has good instructions on how put that file in the right place.  Did it, rebooted, verified Cydia had installed it correctly,  but  – insert wah wah waaaaah sound here — it didn’t fix the signal problem.
• I tried a bunch of other solutions I found but I don’t remember what they were.  Suffice to say, none of them helped.  (Just to highlight my frustration level: at this point I have been at it for about four hours and still have a basically dead phone.)
• I found a comment that said “Did you have pwnage tool hacktivate your phone? I can’t remember the exact steps, but if you use pwnage tool but are on AT&T, you have to uncheck the box that asks if you want pwnage tool to activate (hacktivate) your phone. If you leave this box checked, your phone won’t get activated on ATT.”   Well, that my friends, turned out to be the magic answer.  I’d screwed it up right back at the beginning.

Activate The Phone?  No, actually.

I had used the PwngeTool’s Expert Mode to create the firmware and selected this option:

I had misunderstood that value to mean that it would just register the device on AT&Ts network.   I don’t blame PwngeTool for my mistake (I was in “Expert Mode” and clearly wasn’t an expert!), but I do find that label confusing in light of the comment that tipped me off on the solution:  “If you leave this box checked, your phone won’t get activated on ATT.” Yep, if you check  ”Activate your phone” then your phone will “Not activate”.   Seems backwards to me.

So I started this whole process over from the very beginning (starting at ”The 4.3.3 upgrade” above), but this time used Simple Mode in PwngeTool.  Simple Mode asked me this question:

Well, yes, yes I do.  I believe the answer to this question checks or unchecks the “Activate your phone” option for you.  Yes must equal “unchecked.”  PwngeTool created a new ISFW and then I told iTunes to restore the iPhone using it.

Success!

My phone restarted with iOS 4.3.3, jailbroken and with 4 bars of 3G signal strength on AT&T.  Only 5 hours wasted for a stupid mistake on a project that really wasn’t absolutely necessary.   I did learn a ton about how Cydia and some basics about the system components of iOS.  As a technology guy, I do find a lot of value in understanding systems better.   (But I’d really rather this had just taken the hour I’d planned.)

Since the help on the web for these issues varies far and wide, I thought I’d write up the problems and solutions I’d gone through so others might not feel the same pain.  I can’t claim just altruism though: I also wrote it down so that I didn’t make the same mistake next time!

Alright, now to upgrade my jailbroken iPad…

~ by bryan on May 15, 2011.