Armchair Bronco said:
My original iPad has been constantly crashing. I'm using iOS 5.0. I was at the Apple Store recently on another matter and the Genius there said I should re-install the OS from scratch but *not* do a restore. She said I should do everything manually, including re-installing all apps by hand. And only then should I restore data from the cloud. Just want to confirm that I understood her correctly. Is this the correct way to proceed? If so, what's the outline of steps to take?
I think she may be thinking your backup is corrupted somehow and that's why a manual restore......if I may a few words first...
I feel you may be having a ram issue with your iPad. The original iPad has 256mb ram an ipad2 512mb and the new iPad has 1 gb. All apps use ram to operate and as apps and sites are only getting larger the iPad 1 is starting to show its limited ram.
With the upgrade to 5.0 members reported apps and safari crashing more often on ipad1 this however was alleviated with the update to 5.1 as Kaykaykay has said. So updating would be a good idea here, or is there a reason why you haven't? There are other steps you can take to minimize this happening also. Look at your location services, do you have many of these running as they all use ram, so minimize these to only the apps you are using now. Closing your apps completely can save you a lot of ram.
From the home screen do the four finger swipe up or double press the home button to reveal your multi task bar. These are all the apps that you have opened at one time. Long press the app until it jiggles and a red minus sign will appear above it. Press all these minus signs, this will close the apps not delete them, now press the home button to return to your screen. I close all my apps every night, if you use a lot of apps, close them more regularly.
Now to Safari which can use a lot of ram depending on the sites visited and also keeps bits of data from all these sites. Go into your Safari Settings and clear out your cookies and delete your history. If you would like to get an idea of how many sites you've been to, go to Settings - Safari - Advanced - Website Data - Show All Sites, as you can see that adds up and this is what is deleted when clearing your Cookies.
After doing all that I would suggest a restart. Press and hold the power off button, the one at the top right. You will see a slide appear to power off, slide this and the screen will go dark and a Whirly will appear. When the Whirly disappears your iPad is now off. Press the power button again until the Apple logo appears, this will take a few seconds and your iPad will restart. You should restart your iPad occasionally also as it will keep it running smoothly.
All these steps will free up ram on your iPad and this should then minimize the likelihood of crashes. I would suggest giving this a try first before doing a restore.....hope it helps you.
