Back up your device to iTunes and restore to a stock IPSW

Mar 12, 2014 08:12 GMT  ·  By

People who are experiencing crashes and random reboots with their shiny new iPad Air tablets may finally have a way to eliminate these issues once and for all, according to a new report.

OS X Daily has it on file from several users that iPad Air tablets are affected by a persistent crashing issue, one that may be resolved by clean-installing iOS 7.1 onto the device.

Instead of simply updating from any iOS 7.0.x firmware they may have to iOS 7.1, users are told to perform a clean-install, which means a firmware update coupled with a factory reset.

There are two ways of doing that, one of which involves downloading the iOS 7.1 IPSW for your iPad Air model manually, then restoring to that IPSW file in iTunes.

Another method is to connect your device to your computer, launch iTunes, back up the iPad, select the iPad in the left services bar, choose “Restore iPad” on the right, and follow the on-screen instructions.

After the reboot, users can choose to set up the device as new, or restore from their backup and get all their photos, contacts, apps, etc. back inside the tablet.

OS X Daily claims to have “heard several reports of this completely resolving the low memory errors and crashes with the iPad Air, a problem that seemingly was unique to that device and that did not appear on the iPhone or other iPad models.”