Quick! Pwn Your ‘Phone: A Guide to QuickPwn
by Eric March on August 21, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Today was a good day. Events seemed to conspire and collude around a number of things, all of them good, all of them seeming to mesh rather nicely. Everything I touched was turning to gold — or at least something that looked a lot like gold and was very pretty anyway so its authenticity didn’t really matter as long as there were “ooohs” and “ahhhs” involved. Heady with the rare feeling of a day gone remarkably right, and owing to the need to prepare for a forthcoming article that demanded it be done, I decided it was just about high time I jailbroke my 3G’s cherry using the Dev Team’s latest QuickPwn app. And you know what? Gold, Jerry. Gold.
My own Pwnage process went off without a hitch. Nary a cuss word passed my lips, I tell you — and while I may not have been a 74-stepper swapping war stories with the old-timers, I had plenty of my own share of headaches, heartaches, and hair loss wading through the jailbreaks from 1.1.1 onwards. It is therefore with a great deal of enthusiasm that I proclaim that my Pwnage of the iPhone 3G under Firmware 2.0.2 was a roaring success, and now I’m going to share that success with you — you won’t even have to restore once, and you won’t lose anything you’ve entered or installed on your device.
This works for iPhone and iPod Touch running firmware 2.0, 2.0.1 or 2.0.2. You do not need to upgrade to the latest firmware if you don’t want, but you will need the proper .ipsw that corresponds to the firmware version you are running. This guide will be written under the assumption that you will be upgrading or have already done so, because this is the quickest, easiest path.
And just so you know, I’m doing this to my wife’s 3G as I explain each step, so by the end of this guide, her iPhone will be Pwned, too.
Step 1: Download
To begin with, download the latest QuickPwn using the link in the first paragraph and extract it wherever you won’t lose it. We don’t need it quite yet, we just want to have it ready.
Step 2: Upgrade
If you have already upgraded to Firmware 2.0.2, you can skip this step. Otherwise, fire up iTunes and make sure your device is connected via USB. If it asks you if you want to upgrade to the latest firmware, choose “yes.” If it doesn’t, click on your device and upgrade. (NOT restore. We don’t need to do that anymore. Just “Check for Update” will do nicely.) In either case, let your device upgrade itself. It may take 5-10 minutes or more depending on your system speed and network connection. Don’t worry if the progress bar doesn’t seem to be doing anything. Just be patient and let it do its thing. You don’t want to harsh its mellow.
Step 3: Pwn
If you’ve upgraded, congratulations! If you upgraded prior to this, then you get no kudos, but feel free to help yourself to a cookie. Now that you’ve upgraded, we’re ready to Pwn. Load QuickPwn, choose your device, and click the blue arrow on the bottom right. On the next screen, you will need to locate your firmware .ipsw file, which should be named iPhone1,2_2.0.2_5C1_Restore.ipsw. Because you did the upgrade through iTunes, it will be stored on your local hard drive.
For Windows XP users, this file will be located in:
C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates
where <your user name> is whatever you use to log on to your computer with. Note that Application Data is a hidden folder, so you may need to enable displaying hidden files and folders in your Windows preferences. (From any file window, click on Tools->Folder Options, click the View tab, click the radio button that says “Show hidden files and folders,” click “Apply to All Folders” at the top, then close and reopen your file window.)
For Vista users, this file will be located in:
C:\Users\<your user name>\Appdata\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates
where <your user name> is whatever you use to log on to your computer with. There may be a hidden directory here too, but I lack experience with Vista (envy me) so I don’t know if there is or how to show hidden stuff.
Now that you’ve located and selected your 2.0.2 firmware file, click the blue arrow on the bottom right again. Next you will be given three options: Install Cydia, Install Installer, and Replace boot logos. The first two I recommend you leave checked. Replacing boot logos is entirely your call. It’s a monochromatic pineapple, in case you’re wondering. Once you’ve made your selections, click the blue arrow again. Now you’re ready to start the pwnage. Take a deep, cleansing breath, think positive thoughts, and mash on that “Go!” button.
At this point, the stark and scary command line portion of QuickPwn will pop up and spout all kinds of gobbledygook. The gobbledygook you needn’t worry about, but in a about 10 seconds, it’s going to speak to you, and you need to listen and do as it says. It’s smarter than you are.
The first thing it’s going to ask you to do is to turn off your device. Easy peasy; just bring it out of sleep mode, hold the power button, and slide to turn off. Now it wants you to press ENTER once you’ve done that, so just go ahead and press ENTER. Now here comes the part where you have to something a little trickier. It requires timing — but don’t worry. QuickPwn will hold your hand. What you need to do is (and DON’T DO IT YET. This is just a drill.):
1. Hold the POWER button for 5 seconds.
2. Without letting go of the POWER button, press and hold the HOME button for 10 seconds.
3. Now, let go of the POWER button and keep holding the HOME button for up to 30 seconds — you’ll know when to let go, trust me.
I said this was just a drill, so I hope you didn’t just follow those instructions. What you’re doing is placing your device into DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode. Don’t panic — this isn’t like when you do a restore. QuickPwn knows what to do here and there will be no restoring going on.
Not that we’ve gone over the drill, press “y” when you’re ready to actually perform those functions. Once you press “y” (and hit enter), QuickPwn will perform the three countdowns for you — no need to count in your head. Just pay attention to the QuickPwn window and press/hold/release the appropriate buttons when you’re told to do so for as long as the timers tell you to. It will begin with a 5 second countdown to let you prepare for the real countdowns and button-mashing sequence, so prepare your pressin’ fingers and start the sequence once the first countdown ends and the next begins. During the last phase (holding HOME for up to 30 seconds) you’ll know you can let go when QuickPwn recognizes that DFU mode is engaged and starts the Pwnage process. You’ll see your device go to a white screen, and then the Pwnage pineapple.
Now you just sit back and wait. The entire process will probably take about 2 minutes or so. When it’s done, your device will reboot. Your installed apps, address book, settings, and everything else will remain intact — but now you’ll have Installer and/or Cydia apps on your springboard, depending on which you chose to install.
Congratulations! You you’ve just Pwned your ‘Phone (or Touch) and didn’t have to touch Restore once. My wife’s 3G is now successfully Pwned, too.
Thanks to the Dev Team for a most excellent new tool in the war against sandboxing. Once again, you guys have changed the face of jailbreaking, and as always, you guys rock so hard that nobody can get within five feet of you without being nutted.
Guide over. Go download Winterboard or something. And Snapture. You’ll need that, too. And this kitten. It’s dangerous to go alone.
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Posted in Jailbreak, Tutorials & Help
August 24th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
hey eric,
my savvy iphone connoisseur,
any tips on how to / any apps to recommend for grouping contacs?
i have 1048 contacts. all in one folder. the “categories” in outlook don’t get synched over to the iphone 3G, 2.0.2 jailbroken with quickPwn.
i want to have a separate groups to distinguish friends from business contacts, and have some contacts in 2 groups at the same time.
any tips?
thanks
August 24th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
[...] whole jailbreak thing on the 3G, so I couldn’t play with it right away. That night however, I corrected that situation, and of course the first thing I did was grab Snapture off Cydia to give it a shot — pardon [...]
August 25th, 2008 at 10:15 am
@lorenz: Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s going to be any easy way to handle this. Because the iPhone doesn’t support contact categorization, the function doesn’t translate from Outlook. It is possible to organize contacts using a third party app (several are available in the App Store), but it can only be done within the scope of fields supported by the iPhone — which is pretty much everything but a category field. It’s a pretty significant oversight by Apple, especially when they’ve been focusing on the business aspect of the device — hell, I was able to categorize my contacts on every model of Palm-based device since day 1 — so it’s strange that Apple would omit this. But then, the same goes for MMS.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Thanks for the great walk through, I think I might give it a shot.. I do have one question. Once you jailbreak your phone using quickpwn is there an easy way to lock it back up? Say if you dont like it or you need to take your phone into apple? Please excuse me since I am new to owning an iphone 3g but this will help me and hopefully others that are new to iphones.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
You can definitely un-do the whole jailbreak once you’ve gone through with it all. Simply install one of the newer firmware’s and you’re well on your way to being Apple-approved again!
August 28th, 2008 at 2:10 am
I have jailbroken my iPod touch since I got it last Christmas. I’ve jailbroken it on 1.1.1 using jailbreakme.com, 1.1.4 using ziPhone, and 2.0.1 using Winpwn and for some reason I am no longer able to change my wallpaper. I’ve used customize and summerboard before but I don’t have any idea why it won’t let me change it. I even deleted the photo that it’s currently using but it still shows the same image. This happened after jailbreaking 2.0.1. Any idea what’s going on here? Has anyone heard of this? I don’t understand why restoring multiple times hasn’t corrected this problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I just now used your method described here to upgrade my old 1.4 iphone to 2.02. Everything went fine, except that now I am not getting any network. What do I do now?
August 28th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
i rejailbroke and everything else works but i still can’t change my wallpaper. Does anyone have a clue why?
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
OMG…. I have just gone through all of the instructions to the letter on my iphone 3g 16gb, and everything seems to have run to completion, and the dos window has closed, but it has now been 20 minutes, and the iphone is just sitting there with a black screen, and a picture of a pineapple on it?
Have I bricked it?
Please help
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Were you running the correct firmware upon jailbreaking?
If so, just try giving it up to an hours time.
I’ve never used the program myself, so I am limited to what I can suggest.
I’ll see if I can get Eric to help you out further.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:17 pm
@Chris – It shouldn’t take that long. Try doing a hard reset (hold HOME+POWER until it reboots) and see if it comes back. If that doesn’t work, restore using an official firmware version, then attempt the QuickPwn again. It shouldn’t be too much trouble; I was done and at springboard within a few minutes.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:46 am
NIGHTMARE!!
I have a new iphone 3g 16gb,
I went through the instructions exactly using vista with the original ipsw
everything appeared to be fine during the install, but after the doc window closed there was only a black screen with a pineapple on it (for the last 6 hours)
I then re-run quick pwn, and got exactly the same thing…… holding the power and home button simply turns it off, and when i turn it back on, i have the same black screen and pineapple.
When I connect it to the computer, I get error message OX E8000035, which means that I cannot restore it back to an official version
Please can someone help, have I bricked the phone?
I have tried re-running quick pwn multiple times now with exactly the same results.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:09 am
I couldn’t get the phone to connect to the computer, and couldn’t get it to reset to dfu, so in a last ditched attempt, downloaded the dfu app on the following web page, this allowed me to reset the phone back via itunes so I am now back to where I was at the beginning.
Thanks for all of your help
Chris
September 4th, 2008 at 3:09 am
http://limitededitioniphone.com/how-to-put-the-iphone-into-dfu-mode/
September 20th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
[...] these mirrors here and here. If you’re looking for a tutorial on how to handle QuickPwn, my QuickPwn guide is still quite relevant for this latest version. Just replace all mention of “Firmware 2.0.2″ [...]
October 1st, 2008 at 11:18 am
Hi,
Regarding the contact categorization issue…. If you take a look at iTunes info tab, it allows the ability to sync All or select particular contact Folder(s) with Outlook.
If you go ahead and use Outlook to create sub-folders under contacts, and then move your contacts into these separate folders, when you re-open iTunes, you can change sync options to select these folders.
Then once you have done a sync with iTunes, your contacts will be broken into groups – at the top bar it will tell you which folder you’re looking at: eg
family
business
other
and a default for All Contacts
Hope this helps
Cheers
October 1st, 2008 at 12:03 pm
awesome!
i will try it out
i sync over the air, but i don’t think it’ll be a problem…
October 1st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Welcome!
December 26th, 2008 at 12:52 am
i am getting stuck where i put in the IPSW, it says i have a Frimware error string,
the address looks like this
C:\Users\****\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPod Software Updates\iPod2,1_2.2_5G77a_Restore.ipsw
does anyone know why this is happening?
i have a second generation 16gb itouch and im running on vista
thanks
January 15th, 2009 at 1:28 am
FOR USERS EXPERIENCING ‘HANG’ PRIOR TO QUICKPWN DFU INSTRUCTIONS:
There seems to be a largely undiagnosed problem occuring with Windows users.
I have attempted the Quickpwn process 5 times now, each time with the iPhone switching to ‘connect to iTunes’ mode, and the Quickpwn instructions freezing one step before “Hold down home for 5 seconds..”
One knowledgable guy has offered a potential solution – install Net framework 3.5 prior to your jaibreak attempt, and ensure that a couple of Control Panel; Services ( * Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and * Terminal Services ) have not been disabled.
Someone else suggested Net framework 2.5.
This info can be found here:
http://www.simonblog.com/2009/01/14/iphone-jailbreak-possible-solutions-for-quickpwn-hang-issue/
Note: My Quickpwn Jailbreak has failed 5 times now, each time requiring an iPhone restore. Both the above services were activated, but no Net framework packages were installed.
I will report back after my 6th attempt, with 2.0 and 3.5 Net framework also installed.
I’m so very tired.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
ash im haven the same problem been doin my head in for days
March 14th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Hey,
I started the quickpwn program but i have the 2.2.1 update on my iphone.
Is there any other software i can use?
Cheers
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:57 am
Hi guys,
Hi John Beck,
Sorry it took so long to reply – i lost this page until today.
The following simple tweak solved the ‘hang’ issue for me, and I proceeded with a speedy successful install:
—————————————–
TRY THIS – POSSIBLE SOLUTION FOR ‘HANG’ PRIOR TO QUICKPWN DFU INSTRUCTIONS:
Run QuickPwn from its original Zip file. Ignore the pop up warning that the file may not run properly. Do not unzip!
—————————————–
That’s it! Hope it helps someone..