Defective Ipad?

[chelseyh22]

I cannot get itunes to recongnize my ipad. I have tried everything I can think of and now I am fearing it is defective. When I plug in my ipad, I get the same sound that I get when I plug in my ipod and itunes will come up. But my ipad will not show up under devices, and the ipad itself will only show the "connect to itunes screen".
I have called apple support. They had me uninstall my itunes and everything apple related, and then redownload and install the newest version of itunes. That did not work. I know that the cable isnt faulty because my ipod will work, and because itunes will show up with the connection sound.
The most progress I have made came from reading a similar post from these forums. Someone had suggested holding down the home button while plugging in my ipad. It did work. My ipad showed up in itunes. Itunes told me that I needed to update my ipod software, so I let it download. Then it said my ipad was in recovery mode and needed to restore. After that, itunes said my ipad would now restart and it would show back up under devices. My ipad was never rerecongnized.
Any help would be very much appreciated because I am very frustrated right now!

Alittle more background on this that may or may not help. This is my first experience with ipad, and I have had two ipods in the past with no issues. My ipod recongizes just fine and I'm using windows vista.

This ipad was a Christmas gift for my boyfriend. I live about five hours away from the nearest apple store, so I can't go there for help. I ordered my ipad from apple online, and had it engraved to make it even more special. I'm crushed that I have not been able to get this to work for him and I'd hate to have to send it back for another one. If anyone has any ideas, please help me! Thank you!

 

[BrennB]

did you try the holding the home key down and connecting tactic again? if you can get it to recognize and re-restore you might be in luck. Also see if you you can get it to work on another PC?

 

[ratykat]

Could try putting it into DFU mode or recovery mode. Itunes should see it as a device in recovery and offer to re-install the OS on it again. Let it do it and resync all the music etc back onto it.

If itunes wont detect it in recovery mode then I would suspect a faulty a iPad.

DFU mode as opposed to Recovery Mode, requires a bit of timing and can take practice so if at first you don’t succeed, don’t be afraid to keep trying.

Plug your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad into your Mac or Windows PC and make sure iTunes is running.

Hold down both the Sleep Button (on top of your device) and the Home Button (on the front underneath the screen).

Keep them both held down from about 10 seconds. (If you see the Apple logo, you’ve held them too long and will need to start again.)

Let go of the Sleep Button but keep holding the Home Button for about 5 seconds. (If you see the “Plug into iTunes” screen than you held it too long and will need to start again.)

If the screen stays black, that’s it! Your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad should now be in DFU mode.


I've never had to do this with my iPad (touch wood) but plenty of times with ipod touches and iphones. There are videos on youtube as well if you are unsure.

raty


ps. thanks to rene ritchie for the DFU guide over at tipb as I couldnt be bothered to write it out

pps. There is a difference between DFU and recovery, in that recovery uses iboot (which blocks downgrading of os's) and DFU is a much more direct connection. Using recovery is probably fine, but using DFU uses less of the OS, which is seems to be at fault. Hope this makes sense?