![专用虚拟网 [zhuānyòng xūnǐ wǎng] VPN](http://www.davidpetersson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/vpn.png "专用虚拟网 [zhuānyòng xūnǐ wǎng] VPN")
My Wife has an iPhone 3G 2nd Generation phone and it has been starting to act a little slow lately.
That’s why I thought I’d backup and restore it. As you probably know, the restore will also update the phone to the latest software version these days.
I had forgotten that the phone was possibly a jailbroken version so when I tried to have it restored again in iTunes, it put the phone in Emergency Only mode and gave a cryptic message that went something like this:
“unable to get activation ticket” and “please try again later”
and then had some code at the bottom of the iTunes page.
alendpoint tegus:1010
So, I googled these terms and found nothing that seemed to help. I tried all sorts of jailbreaking software (blackrain, redsnow, yellowsnow, tinyumbrella, pwnd this and pwnd that on both Windows and Mac machines).
I then took it to the store and they did the same thing that I had tried and as I saw them mucking about with it, I knew that I hadn’t done something wrong but that this needed a different approach.
Then I thought that the phone is probably (illegally) imported from Hong Kong while I’m in China. So, perhaps next time I’m in Hong Kong then I can stick a local card in and have it activated. Then I thought again and connected the phone to the Mac, reconfigured the beautiful Astrill VPN to Hong Kong, plugged in the phone and bada-bing bada-boom, there it was activated and ready to be restored from the backup. I also got the latest iOS on it.
As I had spent so much time on this issue and found no help anywhere, I thought I’d put up this little posting to help out comrades in need of help. A little thanks or thumbs up if this helped you :-)
PS. So annoying of Apple to do this. I bought their phone, I bought software from them so then why not let me use it wherever I am in the world? DS.
I have to say that Redsnow is GREAT. I’ve just jailbroken my iphone in only 3 minutes and with just a few clicks. Thanks for the great tutorial!
Just had a similar issue, I have a UK bought iPhone in China & had to do a remote wipe as I lost it, but luckily enough it was returned. I could not activate & got the same error messages but found with a VPN & popping a UK sim card in solved the issue. Would not have thought of this without your help. Many Thanks
Great to see that you found my advice and that it worked.
Cheers,
David
Great hint! Thanks a lot!
I did not switch to any VPN but just put a non-chinese sim card into the 3G (in this case an australian prepaid). This was enough to get through activation properly.
Cheers, Felix
Hi Felix,
That’s interesting… Your experience suggests that there are two ways to solve this problem. Either with a foreign SIM-card or, as I experiences, using a VPN.
Doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white…
David
With Chinese simcard inside, VPN trick is not working
I liked other-country-simcard solution better :)
Btw, thank you very much David, this post was the only result on google..
Thank you! I did not have to use a VPN, but I used my Singapore SIM card and it worked. Whew! Yay for China.
Dave, thanks for this tip! I was trying to upgrade my old 3GS to iOS 5 today and had the same error. I live in China and my 3GS was bought in HK, so after reading your article I popped in my HK SIM and it now works. Thanks! You saved me a hectic trip to the Apple Store.
Hi David and Felix,
Thanks a lot. Saved me hours of frustration that my phone is not working anymore.
I use my Dutch I-phone in China and with the IOS-5 update I recevied the same message. I just inserted my Dutch sim-card and the installation continued.
Thanks again,
Hans