Hi I recently had some problem with my Ipad 2.

Here is the story.

Originally it was jailbroken on iOS 4.3. I gave it to my dad, since I bought the new iPad.
Last month he updated it to 6.1 over the air (OTA), and you already knew, the iPad cannot be used anymore. When he showed it to me, I can only see the “plug in to iTunes” on the screen.

When I try to restore the firmware for it, here comes the issue. iTunes cannot recognize my iPad. Specifically, Windows has some problem in installing the driver for it.

Here is the warning message when I plug the iPad in and Windows finishes installing the driver.



In "Device Manager" I can only see the "Unknown Device" which is supposed to be my iPad.



I tried to follow the troubleshooting on Apple support page by manually installing the driver from "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\Drivers". After doing this here is what I saw in “Device Manager”. Notice the exclamation mark on the “Apple Device”.



I have updated my iTunes to the latest version, by the way, I am using Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bits. I have tried on 2 3 other Win7 machines (32/64 bits), and tried to change other cable as well. So now I am sure the problem is with my iPad.

I am stuck at this for quite some times. Please suggest anything to recover my iPad. Thanks




Based on my experience, I would say the problem IS with your Windows PC and not with the iPad.

Simply updating iTunes doesn't usually fix things when Windows gets its drivers messed up.

My advice is as follows:

1. Remove iTunes (uninstall), and make sure you also remove all other Apple services from "Add / Remove Programs" in Windows. That includes mobile device support, bonjour, etc. Anything that may still be installed which is Apple related, should be removed. (you won't lose your iTunes settings etc.).
2. Reboot your PC. By all means try and plug your iPad in at this stage. You should NOT be able to get a connection, but that is what we expect.
3. Reinstall the latest version of iTunes, which will also produce a clean install of the latest Apple device drivers.
4. Now plug in your iPad and let the drivers properly auto detect. Do not interrupt this process. Unplugging part way though Windows initialisation of the driver is the number 1 cause for this type of issue.

I can't stress how important it is to completely remove the Apple stuff FIRST, and then rebooting.
Simply trying to update to the latest won't work.

Good Luck.

When I get the message that an iPad 3 (5.1.1) or iPhone 4s has been detected but cannot connect to my PC I have found resetting my iPad/iPhone and re-booting my PC works. Doing either on it's own usually doesn't. Not sure if this is the same issue, but you might try it.

BTW it never happens to both at the same time, one will always still connect if one doesn't and not connecting doesn't happen that often.

Originally Posted by f4780y

Based on my experience, I would say the problem IS with your Windows PC and not with the iPad.

Simply updating iTunes doesn't usually fix things when Windows gets its drivers messed up.


Good Luck.

Hi thank you for your suggestion.

I have tried that on my own computer and it still doesn't work. The reason I suspect that it is ipad issue is I did try to connect on few other PCs. And it all yielded the same result.

Well, the last thing I can think of is to find a Mac and give it a try.