Restoring an iPad that is in perpetual recovery mode

My iPad crashed a couple of weeks back… and as this is the iPad that my kids used it was code red! I tried powering it on but the screen remained black. I figured I was completely out of battery so attached it to the charger for hours but still nothing.

Next I tried the old “holding the home + sleep button for 15 seconds” trick, but that didn’t do anything either. Still a black screen. I hooked the iPad unto my Macbook after charging it again for 8 hrs and leaving it alone for another 8. (not that it probably has anything to do with the solution, but I figured I would document the full process…)

iTunes now said that my iPad was in recovery mode. So I figured I would hit “okay” and do a “restore” as iTunes suggested. After going through the full restore cycle my iPad “rebooted” (screen still black so who knows what it did) and it still said it was in recovery mode”. Again no luck. I tried the same procedure on a different PC, this time using Windows… but again no luck. After googling for a while I stumbled on a procedure that actually worked. All credits go to wikidot for writing this up, but this what I had to do to get it working again:

1. Launch iTunes
2. Connect ipad to Macbook
3. Press and hold for 3 seconds Sleep/Wake button.
4. After 3 seconds, keeping hold on Sleep/Wake press Home button for 10 seconds.
5. Release Sleep/Wake one, but hold Home button for another 15 seconds.
6. When “iTunes has detected …in recovery mode..” message appears on computer screen press OK.
7. Press SHIFT+CLICK (PC) or ALT+ CLICK on the restore button.
8. Choose from the opened file dialog the ipsw-file you downloaded. Click Open it. The flashing will begin. Once more, never touch your iPad / iPad 2 / iPad 3 or computer. Let them to complete the job. The tablet will restart itself to complete the firmware flashing.
9. Wait and your iPad will be as new