The Hypervisor Labs tests show upgrading iTunes and QuickTime is essential before upgrading an iPhone to the new OS3 software. In our tests we found the iPhone upgrade worked perfectly provided iTunes had already been upgraded to version 8.2. However, when we tried upgrading an iPhone using iTunes 8.0 the upgrade failed mid-way, leaving the phone deactivated and unusable.

In our tests, iTunes 8.0 tried to upgrade the iPhone and also tried to upgrade itself from version 8 to 8.2. However, the upgrades failed leaving the iPhone locked and able only to make emergency phone calls.

We called Apple’s technical support service and were told there had been a number of people with iPhone OS3 upgrade problems. The technical support operator talked us through the procedure to get the phone working again.

The main problem was that Windows needed the original versions of the iTunes and QuickTime MSI files in order to uninstall the old Apple software. We didn’t have the MSI files so we downloaded the Windows installation cleanup utility to remove the old version directly from the Windows registry. We could then install the latest versions of the Apple software onto our PC, at which point the iPhone could connect to the iTunes and was automatically re-activated.

We think it’s great that Apple’s Technical Support people were able to fix our problem so quickly. However, we were a little disappointed that a few loopholes in the upgrade process seemed to cause the problem in the first place.