Apple No Service with friend's iPhone 2G

[Lacius]

My friend decided she wanted to downgrade her iPhone 2G from 3.1.3 to 3.1.2. It worked, but now she gets no service. I have tried restoring her firmware to 3.1.3, but there is still no service. Help would be very much appreciated.

 

[DanTheManMS]

I assume she's on AT&T since you didn't specify, but is this the case?

 

[Lacius]

I assume she's on AT&T since you didn't specify, but is this the case?

Yes, sorry. However, I was able to sort of fix the problem. I re-downgraded her back to 3.1.2, still without service. I then jailbroke her phone using blackra1n (still no service) and "upgraded" the phone to the latest version of whited00r, which is a modified version of 3.1.3 for those of you who don't know. This did not return service. However, I decided to download the unlocked version of whitesn0w in order to try that, and service returned. This makes no sense since she is using AT&T. Although solved for the time being, I would still like help in figuring out what the problem was in the first place and if it is safe to, for example, restore back to the original 3.1.3. I would also like to know what repercussions there are, if any, to using unlocked firmware on the AT&T network.

Edit: I'm sure it is also worth pointing out that the problem seemed to stem from the fact that after any restore, whether it was with 3.1.3, 3.1.2, or whited00r (not unlocked), iTunes said it was unable to update carrier settings and gave error 1631. Restoring to the unlocked version of whited00r did away with this error and restored service. Likewise, when I say I did a restore, I mean that I always setup the phone like it was new; I did not restore from backup. When I did restore from backup, it did not fix the problem.

 

[Dialexio]

This may seem like an odd question, but would you happen to know the iPhone's country of origin? If it's not from the US, it's probably locked to a European carrier (e.g.- O2, Orange, T-Mobile). If this is the case, you could try to restore to stock 3.1.3, jailbreak (with an old version of PwnageTool, redsn0w, or sn0wbreeze), then unlock with BootNeuter.

 

[Lacius]

This may seem like an odd question, but would you happen to know the iPhone's country of origin? If it's not from the US, it's probably locked to a European carrier (e.g.- O2, Orange, T-Mobile). If this is the case, you could try to restore to stock 3.1.3, jailbreak (with an old version of PwnageTool, redsn0w, or sn0wbreeze), then unlock with BootNeuter.

It is from the US, and it also worked for a very long time with service on 3.1.3 without ever having been jailbroken. Only recently was it jailbroken with Spirit and then restored to 3.1.2 in iTunes (legitimate iTunes server, no SHSH backup). It then refused to get service no matter what firmware was on there until I restored it to whited00r unlocked. BootNeuter was then loaded and fixed the problem, but I am concerned that I had to use an unlock even though it had always used AT&T (and still does).

My main question right now, aside from what caused this in the first place, is if there is any harm in letting the phone remain unlocked by BootNeuter on whited00r even though the user uses AT&T.