I have just made the jump from OS 3.0 to OS 3.1.2 on the iPhone 3GS and encountered an error that when I did some research seems to be affecting quite a few users out there. This is the ‘Restoring from Backup’ loop that you suffer when you try and restore a backup of your phone onto your recently restored iPhone.
This is not only relating the the OS 3.0 to OS 3.1.2 jump but can happen to everyone on any firmware but regardless, we have a fix that works on any firmware.
The fix in itself is quite simply but was found by chance by Willius on Apple’s very own support forums.
All it involves is that when you do encounter the dreaded ‘Restoring from Backup’ loop and it isn’t progressing from that for a while, you simply need to unplug your iPhone, close iTunes fully (best done by CTRL+ALT+DELETE and stopping iTunes.exe’s process) and then pluging in your device once again.
The ‘Restore in Progress’ screen should appear on your device and after some minutes of this, all your backuped data will be back on your device.
Restoring from Backup*
Thank you for the correction