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Hi, In my tiny community, I’m known for fixing iPhones and iPads. The other day I got a very interesting iPad 2 (iOS 7.1) which has been totally disabled with wrong passcode tries. The owner swears she always entered the right passcode and it didn’t unlock. She even tried so long that now the iPad only says: “iPad is disabled. Connect to iTunes.” When you connect the iPad to iTunes, it says it’s locked with a passcode. Really? Who would’ve thought. :) I even went to her place to connect the iPad to her computer because I naively thought the iTunes there will definitely say I should enter the passcode. Well it didn’t. She of course doesn’t want to lose all the data, because she obviously didn’t back up this iPad in a very long time. I’m playing with the idea of opening the iPad and disconnecting the battery. Do you guys have any experience with that? When I reconnect the battery and turn the iPad on, will it offer me a chance to enter the passcode? All constructive opinions and questions welcome! :)

Hello Jan, First off, DO NOT OPEN THE IPAD! This is a very risky and unnecessary option. Simply turn the iPad off, hold the home button, and plug it into the computer. Continue holding the home button until the iTunes logo comes up. This is recovery mode; you can now restore the iPad without a passcode. If recovery mode doesn’t work: Plug in your iPad to the computer and turn it off. Hold the home button for three seconds. Then, without releasing your lock button, hold the home button down as well for ten seconds. Then, without releasing your home button, continue pressing just it for 15 seconds. This is called DFU mode. Any questions, just let me know! Hope this helps!

Turn the iPad off completely. Connect to the USB on the computer while holding down the home and power buttons. That will send it into restore mode. From there, iTunes will pop up on your computer. Click on restore and update. Confirm the update and restore. It will turn the iPad off and on as it extracts the software and resets the iPad. This should send it back to factory settings unless it is locked with an Apple ID. If so, enter your information on the computer when it prompts, and you should be all good! Update Turn off the ipad. Plug in your cable. Turn on your iPad and hold down the home button at the same time. If that doesn’t work ,then pull up iTunes on your desktop and then try the process all over again. The power has to be off, though, on the iPad.

No. It will definitely just boot to the same iPad is disabled screen. There is no way to solve this without restore–none that I know of at least.

Try updating your ios in restore mode. It should get you out of the disable mode and allow you to enter your passcode. Or, if you have iCloud set up on your iPad, go to iCloud and send a passcode reset to it, which should disable the passcode and you can set up a new one.

Don’t waste your time searching for tricks that don’t exist. If you’ve got no back up, just use the recovery mode to restore the iPad and be prepared that all data will be gone except the ones backed up to your icloud account eg bookmarks, notes etc

I found this today, haven’t tried it yet, good luck everybody

  1. Configurator is useless in reactivating a locked iPad. You will only be able to completely reformat the iPad using Configurator. If that’s ok with you, go for it – otherwise don’t waste your time trying to figure it out.
  2. Open iTunes with the iPad disconnected.
  3. Connect the iPad to the computer and wait for it to show up in the devices section in iTunes.
  4. Click on the iPad name when it appears and you will be given the option to restore a backup or setup as a new iPad (since it is locked).
  5. Click ‘Setup as new iPad’ and then click restore.
  6. The iPad will start backing up before it does the full restore and sync. CANCEL THE BACKUP IMMEDIATELY. You do this by clicking the small x in the status window in iTunes.
  7. When the backup cancels, it immediately starts syncing – cancel this as well using the same small x in the iTunes status window.
  8. The first stage in the restore process unlocks the iPad, you are basically just cancelling out the restore process as soon as it reactivates the iPad. If done correctly, you will experience no data loss and the result will be a reactivated iPad. I have now tried this with about 5 iPads that were locked identically by students and each time it worked like a charm.

Hello Jan Ferme, option 01 You can check in icloud whether all data in there [http://Here |https://www.icloud.com/] is the link. if data available in iTunes you can get all data back after restore. Option 02 Use [http://this|http://www.easeus.com/iphone-recovery/tr…] recovery tool and you can recover lost data back.

The only time I have had the “this whatever is disabled” is because the “after 10 failed pass codes erase date” was on, in that case all is lost already… So… But after you get it going again I would turn on iCloud backup that way it will back its self up when plugged in and not in use… (Like at night)

  1. Connect to iTunes
  2. Hold down power button and home button at the same time until screen turns off, then count 1 to 5
  3. Release power button and wait for the computer screen to pop up the message asking to restore
  4. Release home button, then restore the phone

Turn off iPad, Connect USB cable to computer; leave the other end alone,Press and hold the Home button down and connect the docking end of cable to iPad,Continue holding the Home button until you see the “Connect To iTune” screen,Release the Home button,Open iTune,You should see “iTunes has detected an iPad in recovery mode”,Use iTune to restore iPad. Also Visit our AngularJS Website.

I just fixed mine this morning after 2 days of working on it. You need to disconnect the battery first. Look it up on YouTube because you need to interrupt the connection with a straw or guitar pic. Reconnect battery. On Computer open iTunes, plug your cord in the computer. Then plug in the iPad. When you see the apple, hold the home button and don’t let go until up you see the iTunes logo on iPad. Click restore on iTunes

  1. Turn off iPad
  2. Connect USB cable to computer; leave the other end alone
  3. Press and hold the Home button down and connect the docking end of cable to iPad
  4. Continue holding the Home button until you see the “Connect To iTune” screen
  5. Release the Home button
  6. Open iTune
  7. You should see “iTunes has detected an iPad in recovery mode”
  8. Use iTune to restore iPad

For those who need to restore their iPads because it has been disabled and don’t mind losing all their data, you will need to do the following:

  1. Download the latest iOS IPSW Firmware File specifically for your iPad from a website you trust. (I’ve used this page: http://www.redmondpie.com/download-ios-9…)
  2. Put your iPad in DFU mode.
  3. Open up iTunes on Computer
  4. Connect iPad to Computer
  5. iTunes will say iPad is in DFU Mode, you will need to restore…..
  6. Hold Alt/Option key (for Mac) while clicking on “Restore” button on iTunes.
  7. Browse for the IPSW Firmware File you downloaded earlier and select that file.
  8. Follow the rest of the instructions from iTunes to Restore your iPad. Hope this helps! I’ve done this several times for friends and family. The Firmware download thru iTunes never seems to work. I’ve had successes using the downloaded firmware from Redmondpie.com.

With the developement of iCloud, I don’t recommend DFU or Recovery mode to force factoryr reset iPad, because of Find My iPad feather, force factory reset will make iPad locked by activation, we need Apple ID and password to bypass activaton lock. We can fix disabled iPad for free with the iCloud when we have Apple ID and password, the Erase feather on iCloud can fix disabled iPad, but without Apple ID either, turn to the tool to fix disabled iPad, but will erase all data on iPad after the process, so, think about it.