Recovering Photos from iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch with iOS 9 Slide to Upgrade Bug and Backup Fails

I got hit with the Slide to Upgrade Bug when upgrading my iPad from iOS 7.1.2 to iOS 9 this weekend. Apple’s solution at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205239 is to force restart your device, connect to iTunes, take a backup if you need and restore your device from the backup. For me, taking the backup failed with an error “You iPad has not be setup”. If you are able to sync, you can sync your photos with the Photos application. If even that did not work, there is still hope.

The way I recovered my photos from my iOS device stuck on Slide to Update screen was really simple. I plugged my device into a computer without iTunes. This mounts the photos folder on the computer and allows you to copy all the photos to a safe place. I used Ubuntu 14.04 for this, but if you have Windows, that will do just fine. Remember that it should not have iTunes.

Since, I did not have a spare computer I used the free Virtual Box to create a Ubuntu 14.04 virtual machine. Connected my iPad to the computer. Then used the Device -> USB menu in Virtual Box to connect my iPad directly to the Ubuntu Virtual Machine. Force reset the iPad. Since this was the first time I connected my device to the Virtual Machine. I had to unlock the iPad and click on Trust button in the dialog on my iPad to allow the computer access to the iPad. The iPad was then mounted and I could simply copy my photos off the iPad onto a hard disk.

If you are stuck on the Slide to Update screen and nothing happens when you slide, repeat sliding very quickly. It took me about 10 very quick slides before it gave me the unlock screen. Once I entered my pin, I got the dialog to Trust the computer.

Along with photos, you can still recover some more data from your device. Some apps have file sharing enabled and the shared data from these apps can be copied even if the backup or sync is failing in iTunes. To do so, you will need to connect your device to iTunes and click on the apps tab. At the bottom of the page there is a section labeled File Sharing. You can select the app from that list and save all the files shown on the right side. The details on how to use this feature from Apple at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201301.

I also managed to check the syslog and get a crash dump. It seems that the reason for the failed Slide to Update screen is due to the data migration process (com.apple.datamigrator) which keeps crashing while migrating data, but it is pure speculation on my part.

Feel free to drop me a comment if you find this useful or need more instructions on how to set up the Virtual Machine.

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File Logging Plugin v3.0 for Selenium IDE

My File Logging plugin for Selenium IDE has undergone a bunch of useful changes and I have released a new version today. The changes in version 3.0 are as follows:- Separate log file for scheduled tests (requires Selenium IDE v2.10+) … Continue reading

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Selenium IDE Scheduler Has Arrived – Part 6

In part 5, you learnt more about how to add more jobs, edit jobs and delete them along with the Run Now feature and the Activity log. This is the final part of this series where I talk about some … Continue reading

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Selenium IDE Scheduler Has Arrived – Part 5

In part 4, you learnt more about setting schedules using two advanced ways, viz., using the natural language processor and using cron-like expressions. In this part, I am going to walk you through the rest of the functionality in the … Continue reading

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Selenium IDE Scheduler Has Arrived – Part 4

In part 3, you learnt more about setting schedules for jobs using the schedule check boxes. In this part, I am going to show you more possibilities for setting the schedule. Open the scheduler dialog box. If you have forgotten … Continue reading

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Selenium IDE Scheduler Has Arrived – Part 3

In part 2, you created a new job and scheduled a test suite to run every 5 minutes. In this part, I am going to show you how to modify the job to be scheduled at various times. Let us … Continue reading

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Selenium IDE Scheduler Has Arrived – Part 2

Part 1 gave you a quick overview of the new Scheduler feature in Selenium IDE v2.9 along with my ramblings. In this part, I am going to show you how to work with scheduler jobs to run your test suites … Continue reading

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Selenium IDE Scheduler Has Arrived – Part 1

It is finally here! I am about to commit all the code for the scheduler and release v2.9.0 of Selenium IDE and it will be awesome contain it very own scheduler. (It is awesome, but you decide that). What exactly … Continue reading

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Test Results Plugin v2.0 for Selenium IDE

My Test Results plugin for Selenium IDE has undergone a bunch of useful changes and I have released a new version today. The changes in version 2.0 are as follows:- Improved formatting of the test results. Show the failure / … Continue reading

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Stored Variables Plugin v2.0 for Selenium IDE

I have finally released a new version of my Stored Variables plugin for Selenium IDE. How time flies! It was several years ago that I planned to release full editing capabilities this plugin. All I can say is so many thing … Continue reading

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