iPhone 2G screen repair (not worth it)

I came upon an old iPhone 2G with a cracked glass screen.  I bought a $10 kit from Hong Kong that came with a plastic replacement screen and tools. I had seen instructions on how to replace an iPhone 2g’s screen, and the kit was cheaper than the alternatives.  Bad decision.  I was not able to separate the glass from the digitizer–they are permanently glued together. Best bet would be to replace the device entirely.  Perhaps peruse local flea markets for a gently used iPod Touch.

Issue restoring iPhone 3GS to iOS 4

I encountered a bunch of errors trying to upgrade an iPhone 3GS to iOS 4 yesterday.  The phone was stuck in restore mode, and after a few uninstall and reinstalls of iTunes to no avail, I was tired.  The instructions on Apple’s support site offer several suggestions, e.g., try a new USB cable, try a different computer, reinstall iTunes, use msconfig and disable non-essential services.  The latter was the culprit; however, what the instructions for Windows XP didn’t seem to mention was that you need to enable certain services.  All it says to have enabled is qttask and iTunesHelper.  I had gone into msconfig at an earlier date and removed services and startup entries that I deemed non-essential.  Unfortunately, the lack one of those was hindering the iPhone restore process.  Enabling all the non-Microsoft services start-up entries and did the trick.  The phone is now running iOS 4 like a champ.