SOLVED
My grandmother thought she needed an iPhone. I told her she didn't, but what do I know. Now here I am.
Apparently she entered the wrong passcode 10 times, and now the phone says, "iPhone is disabled. Connect to iTunes". However, I am unable to connect it to iTunes. The phone has never been connected to iTunes before, and the phone is disabled. When connecting it to iTunes, I get a message stating "itunes could not connect to this iphone beacuse an unknown error occurred 0xe8000015".
I cannot get the phone to go into recovery mode because it won't connect to iTunes. I've tried it on multiple computers, updated itunes, reinstalled, etc.
I thought I might be able to erase it by using icloud, but that wouldn't work either. The website just said the erasing was pending and would erase when the phone connected to the internet.....but the phone is disabled, so it can't connect to the internet.
Help? Anyone? I'm so frustrated. I've googled the heck out of it and tried anything and everything I can find, but no luck so far.
Comments
"See grandma? This is exactly why I didn't want you to get an iPhone. Here's your new Jitterbug."
Plug the cable into the PC, disconnect it from the phone, and power off the phone. Then, hold the Home button while you connect the cable to the phone and continue holding it while it boots. It should boot in recovery mode.
If it doesn't, you will have to put it into DFU mode. This requires special timing when pressing and holding certain keys while booting the phone. Plug the phone into the PC, shut the phone down, and then follow instructions like these:
DFU mode will let you restore it like a new phone except possibly for one thing. If the phone is "iCloud locked" then it will require the previous user's Apple ID and password to use/setup again. It sounds like you have this if you have already attempted to use iCloud to reset the phone.
I really hate iPhones and their security until I lose mine one day. I've had something similar happen before, it doesn't show this screen after you hold down the home and power button for awhile then you plug it into iTunes?
After several hours of trying everything on the face of the planet, I finally got it to connect to itunes. For whatever reason, it wouldn't connect to itunes on either of my computers. I was doing everything correctly, and then it finally worked after unplugging it from the computer and retrying for the 50th time. I have no idea why it wasn't working. Had it worked like it should, it would have been a pretty easy fix. Needless to say, Grandma doesn't have a password or touch ID anymore. lol