Oh no! iPad Update Failure at 1:45 AM? - PRR Computers, LLC

by Phil Rice
12 years ago
1054 Views

Yikes.  Just had a gigantic scare.  I’ve been putting off the iOS 5 update on my iPad 1, but lately I’ve been taking a hard look at Apple’s office-related apps… namely Pages (word processor) and Numbers (spreadsheets).  Both are feature-rich apps which can create really beautiful documents – and they are probably the most capable apps of their kind on the iPad.  Well, those apps require the latest version of the iPad’s operating system, iOS 5.  So I figured it was time.

I performed a backup of my iPad via iTunes and then started the update process.  10-15 minutes or so later, I was greeted with a really scary error message that made my hair stand on end.

Ipad1-b

Here it is almost 2 in the morning, and it appears I’ve just bricked the portable computer I use on a daily basis.

Apparently, the 1611 error I received isn’t terribly uncommon… and also has a wide variety of possible causes.

In a fit of common sense troubleshooting, I explored a theory that I didn’t find mentioned anywhere in Apple’s troubleshooting documentation for this error.  For this first year of iPad ownership, I’ve been syncing and updating the device via a USB port on the side of my Dell monitor.  It’s worked great every time til now.  But even though they are attached to a powered device (the monitor), USB ports which aren’t directly on the motherboard are generally regarded as being part of a USB “hub” – which can sometimes have limited throughput (data transfer rate) issues compared to those on the motherboard.

So it occurred to me, maybe the problem was that for such a large software update, the limited data rate was getting in the way.

I safely disconnected my iPad and reattached it to a USB port directly on the PC.

With one click of a button in iTunes, and about 30 minutes of waiting, the firmware, operating system, apps, and data were all restored and ready to go.

Whew!

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